He has really left the building. As you may know, he departed freethoughtblogs rather acrimoniously, took a few potshots at Natalie, and returned to his old blog. He also created a second blog, which I guess I’ll recommend to you: Loftus Unleashed.
I have no idea what is going on in his head. I don’t think I want to know, but I hope he’s got a few real-life friends to help him out.
Okay, the “Mental Facility” post is actually kinda funny. I hope this means he’s starting to laugh about the whole thing.
“Loftus Unleashed”
Why does that sound so funny?
he has the exact same layout and colors as my blog. I understand that being on blogger means there are probably 1000s like it, but it still made me do a double-take!
I’m confused. This is the first time I’ve heard about this moment of drama. Is he saying that because one blog on here has more accommodating comment rules that that somehow effects the comment rules on his blog?
Last I checked, the LJF comment rules only applied there. I can still eat philistine for breakfast anywhere else on FTB.
Yeah, jamessweet, thanks for seeing the humor in it. That’s all it’s supposed to be. I’m fine.
@John
Honey, it’s not about you.
Now why don’t you go take your importance and influence and big white penis and go piss off?
Funny, I had no idea that PZ shared the same name as a grocery store.
One annoying thing about smart people is they often feel immune to being foolish. When they decide their intellectual superiority entitles them to not ‘suffer fools gladly,’ they often fail to recognize who the actual fool is.
Slight correction. PRESUMED intellectual superiority. Often we find a certain brand of atheist who believe themselves in the intellectium because they solved one puzzle. Thus they’re smarter than other people. No need to think about how very smart people don’t solve this puzzle or that people who are saturated in the very isolated culture of this manage to solve it as well…or that young children can solve it if they’re not tricked before hand, no no no that would mean that it isn’t a question of intelligence!
I’d recommend assholes like TJ The AMAZING ASSHOLE and Loftus read about the actual science of belief. The God Virus, 50 Reasons People Give For Believing in God, and now 50 Common Beliefs People Think Are True are great ways to see why people believe.
People believe because of how the mind works, not because it isn’t working. Skepticism and rational thought is not the default position, much like olympian or gymnist isn’t the body’s default position. All that seperates them from being like Behe are a few basic lessons in critical thought. The line is razor thin
I, like ragarth, am baffled as to how this all got going. I don’t read all the comments in all the blogs on this site, so massive pieces of the puzzle are missing for me. Did we really get into all this because Libby Anne chose to have a commenting policy on her own personal blog? Could someone please provide some kind of summary?
At least with Elevatorgate, I knew what the fuck was going on.
@Lyra
This is because
a) Loftus is insane
b) Loftus left on his own
c) Loftus played the “I’m an important man and you’re just a dumb minority hire” to Natalie Reed.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/02/15/target-audiences-and-playing-nice/#comment-3704
Loftus should have been booted out if he hadn’t left on his own. It’s grotesque how he whines about mean atheists while using language that can be mistaken for death threats and being a bigoted ass.
Don’t worry Mr. Loftus, if history has taught us anything it’s that for everyone here you alienate you’ll get a new friend who is all too happy to dedicate pages and pages of post about how dumb cunts we all are.
@We Are Ing
Calling someone crazy isn’t proof that they’re crazy! Let us start with the assumption that I don’t even know who Loftus is, considering I don’t!
Lyra, John Loftus announced that he was leaving FTB long before Libby Anne and Natalie Reed made their first posts here.
He had a problem with all of the profane atheists who infests FTB when all he wants is to have talks with the christians. Which is funny, he should have known what he was entering into, the smart asses that are Ed Brayton’s and PZ Myers’ readership were around years before there was a FTB.
I first noticed how badly flawed his thinking was when he started defending William Lane Craig’s attitudes and philosophy.
If anyone isn’t aware, he devolved into ad hominem and assumed superiority by right of earning it, somehow. Something like – ‘You pathetic losers, don’t tell me what is rational, I am educated more than you could ever understand.’
That’s about the sum total of my experience with him. If he was to ever apologize and admit he was out of line…. I highly doubt he has the capacity for honesty, however. Definitely not humility.
He’s a pompous, fool of a child, and all he really wants to talk about is his book, and brilliant it is.
how brilliant he thinks it is… sigh
We Are Ing #12,
Oh, please. Stop that bullshit.
It appears to me that Loftus is an ass. It appears to me that Loftus was a bigoted asshole towards Natalie.
It does not appear to me that him saying he might “turn (his) guns” on his critics was a death threat, nor was it anything that could be construed as such by any reasonable person.
I’ve tried tracking back through the threads to find the thing that set John off, but I haven’t had any luck. I’ve liked a lot of his work, but I just can’t figure out what he’s reacting to… or why he’s reacting the way he is. One moment he’s claiming that other atheists are “turning their guns” on him – which is presumably bad – and the next he’s saying he’s going to do the same to them – which is, what, okay because he’s doing it? I understand he’s got a lot to cope with in his non-blogging life, and my heart goes out to the guy, but when he jumps from “this is wrong” to “but I’m going to do it anyway, and sound righteous about it, too,” I wonder if he hasn’t left the Church as far behind as he’d like to think.
I vaguely remember John W. Loftus. I didn’t follow his blog much because the first post of his that I encountered was him defending William Craig’s defense of genocide. I was aware he had left FtB
After poking around on Google and the link We Are Ing gave me, it seems the whole situation went like this.
*John W. Loftus joins FtB.
*John W. Loftus decides to leave FtB.
*John W. Loftus says in the comments of Cammels and Hammers that part of the reason he left FtB because of the “mean-spirited nature of just a few of the bloggers.”
*A commenter with the screen name “grungor” mocks John.
*John says he will “turn his guns on these atheists” (I’m assuming he meant the atheists who he said “ARE cowards who hide behind anonymous names and who are not making a comparable difference “).
*grungor says John should take that comment back
*John says he won’t, and that it is only a matter of time before he “turn[s] [his] guns on atheists,”
*John and various commenters fight over various things.
*Natalee Reed makes the post “Target Audiences And Playing Nice” on her FtB blog.
*John posts in Natalee Reed’s blog, saying things to her and about her like “I guess it doesn’t matter what one’s credentials are to be [FtB], now does it? After all diversity is much more important.”
*Other bloggers on FtB get upset at John’s comments and make blog posts.
Does this sound like a fair summary?
Ah, a missionary. I’ve seen that film. Loved the music.
William Lain Craig defending genocide is acceptable, but atheists being “mean-spirited” on FtB is unacceptable?
Bwah? I would rather someone be “mean-spirited” to me than go all genocidal on my ass.
Well, we are the bad guys, in the conveniently Manichean worldview of WLC and his admirers. Irredeemable. Pure evil.
Oh, don’t worry; the whole ‘genocide was justified’ thing was about past societies, ones for which we have little historical information and so can say whatever the fuck we want about in order to justify our belief that God is good, even when he’s clearly evil. No one is making the comparison to contemporary, non-made-up cultures. See, those past societies were sick to the core. Even the little babies.
What’s that? You can’t concieve of a baby so evil it has to be destroyed just because? Well, er, these babies had nuclear bombs in ’em. And birthmarks in the shape of racist slurs. Totally evil, unlike regular babies. God had to kill ’em. The Jews had to kill ’em. The fate of the free universe depended on it.
Makes perfect sense.
I must say that I love his immediately popping up here (vanity-googling much?) to talk more about how little he cares about the whole thing, and blah blah flounce.
What a sad, whiny little man, so convinced of his own importance and intellectual *snicker* prowess.
I just had a look at his new “old” blog, Debunking Christianity.
He seems to find it very important to wave his qualifications around. He even has a poll on the front page asking readers to vote on their level of education.
As for the that comment he left at Natalie Reed’s blog, well there not words to describe how vile he is. I can see why he would defend William Lane Craig: They seem to share a similar moral outlook.
To be fair, he defends Craig as a good scholar, but he calls him out – repeatedly – on defending genocide. In fact, that’s the thing he hammer Craig with most frequently – that he’s hypocritically defending a monstrous God with his admirable intellectual abilities.
Me, I’m not so convinced of Craig’s intelligence. He’s a sophist and only a mediocre philosophical mind, though much loved in his particular field, for reasons that should be obvious. As for John, I never could get a read on him. At times he seemed arrogant, at other times self-effacing. The only consistent theme was that he felt persecuted. To be fair, as an atheist, he probably was – we all know that – but it’s not like being an ex-minister-turned-freethought-advocate is GUARANTEED to put you so thoroughly on the defensive. Look at Dan Barker, for instance. He seems reasonably chipper to me.
okstop:
Precisely my reaction when I read Ing’s first paragraph at #12. It’s all too familiar.
Also, I didn’t see what he said to Natalie Reed, but she’s been nothing but nice to people, so if it’s even close to as vile as people have let on, he should be deeply ashamed of himself.
Brownian, #20,
The film? Hell I’m a fan of the whole position!
Louis
@ Ms. Daisy Cutter:
That is the best screen name, ever.
@ragarth Calling him crazy doesn’t make him crazy, what he posts makes him crazy:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/02/15/target-audiences-and-playing-nice/
He’s either crazy, or a poorly programmed bot.
Apologies for screwing up the blockquoting in my #29. I blame ATHEISTS and their MEANNESS! You know who you are.
Louis
Louis, am I supposed to take a comment like that lying down?
I don’t know about voicing support for WLC, but Loftus has been making a big noise about Craig refusing to debate him. Which is strange, because Craig would devour him in seconds. I first became aware of Loftus on the commonsense atheism site when he took umbrage at the fact that the guy who runs that site offered some advice (to no one in particular) on how to go about debating Craig. Enter Loftus. After 2 minutes the discussion was all about how Loftus didn’t need advice from ANYONE on how to handle Craig. The gist of Loftus’s case, it seemed to me, is that he was once a pupil of Craig’s and was an experienced debater. Oh, and that he had ‘a trick’ up his sleeve. When the website guy suggested that defeating Craig in a debate is something that should be done with a good, well-organised, well-informed debating style, not tricks, Loftus nearly blew a gasket.
Out of curiosity, I looked his debates up on Youtube. I think there’s er…one on there. And guess what? Yes, as you might have guessed, Loftus is dire, utterly atrocious. Unless I’m missing some wonder-debate that he’s done, the only one I could find is one in which he can’t even say good evening to the audience, or thank you to the hosts, without reading it from a script. And even then he’s stumbling and mumbling and generally woeful.
And that hat…Jesus Christ, he’s got the audience thinking he’s a fucking escapee from a mental institute before he even starts. Who wears a hat indoors FFS!
I bet Craig’s crapping himself at the thought of debating that dunce!
@okstop
He defends Craig as a “good man, a good philosopher, an honest man, and [John’s] friend.”
If John can say that people who defend genocide are “good people,” I’m boggled by him. If John cannot apply is above statement to anyone he views as “mean spirited” (John doesn’t say that the “mean spirited” are also good people and friends,) then his priorities are whacked.
I’m not sure how John defines “good man,” as apparently “good man” doesn’t even preclude apologizing for genocide. “Good man” shouldn’t just mean “I like him,” despite the fact that people often confuse the two.
It reminds me of a piece I read some time go talking about people’s inclination to ascribe “good” to people they like, using Homer Simpson as an example (people like Homer Simpson, they think he is funny, the empathize with him at times, but he is still a bad person if you look at his objective qualities). I wish I could find that piece. It was very interesting.
Brownian, #33,
Well taking it on the chin would be a whole different matter…
Louis
@Lyra:
You’re right, he does say Craig is a “good man,” which I also find baffling. But this is the thrust of his criticism against Craig for defending genocide – he’s basically accusing Craig of tying himself in knots and defending positions he doesn’t REALLY believe in, for the sake of a consistent theology.
Me? I’m not convinced Craig is a good man. I don’t have John’s hang-up about WLC. I suspect you’re right about how he defines “good man” (i.e., “I like the guy”).
Also, good point about the fact that he can defend WLC as “good” – a man who articulates positions he claims to find reprehensible – and decry atheists – who agree with him in principle but disagree on execution – as “mean-spirited.” That’s some deep damned cognitive dissonance.
Brownian
Uhm… Brownian… I may be falling in love with your brain.
PZ Myers: I don’t think I want to know.
Whatever. I don’t even care much less care to know.
I did like the John Loftus book that I read. It was long and scholarly. Other than that I haven’t paid much attention.
There is no reason why the secular, rational, and freethought communities should have one exact voice. Herding bright and educated people is like herding cats. Being sheep is for xians, as they call their members sheep and their fleecer ministers, Shepherds.
Why would it matter how brilliant one is when generating apologetics for specific religions? At the end of the day, is anyone who’s not bathing in the Kool-Aid® going to care that you’ve argued that heaven is made of papier-mâché rather than semi-solid cloud better than the fellow who argues it’s made of pill-bottle cotton? The entire point is to provide easily consumed and regurgitated arguments for the plebs to assuage their cognitive dissonance with. It’s only complete fucking morons like Piltdown Man who think apologetics mean something.
Uhm… Nobody… (hides hat behind back and looks around suspiciously while whistling).
you’ve got a point though. Even if Loftus was the best debater out theren an audience of WLC loving christians would only look at him as the crazy guy with the hat. It’s like all the christians on youtube telling AronRa to get a haircut. What you say isn’t important to these people, it’s all about presentation.
“And that hat…Jesus Christ, he’s got the audiance thinking he’s a fucking escapee from a mental institute before he even starts. Who wears a hat indoors FFS!
Terry Pratchett?
You said a mouthful. Your pointed remarks have pricked my ego. I kneel before you.
@Brownian:
I agree with your general point, though (and this is a big disclaimer) when properly done, properly done apologetics are supposed to be convincing to anyone – i.e., supposed to provide plausible reason for believing in God. They just wind up as bootstrapping and question-begging, in actual practice, but in theory, a thoroughly successful apologetic argument should convince even us. Good luck with that.
As for why it should matter whether Craig is brilliant or not, it doesn’t in the larger sense, but I’m in the field (philosophy, not phil of religion), so I have a professional interest in his technical acumen. I don’t expect that to matter to anyone but me, though. Besides, as I said, I haven’t been that impressed with Craig’s work. Compare him to, say, Plantinga. He’s a brilliant thinker who’s done great work outside of phil religion; when he offers an apologetic argument, you usually have to work hard to figure out where he went wrong. Mind you, he’s gotten a bit wacky of late – he needs to stay out of phil bio altogether, as his comments about ID have proven.
I doubled up on “properly done.” Drat.
Beats me. I don’t understand why anyone wears anything indoors, unless they’re simmering pasta sauce, and even then the little apron French maids wear is more than adequate protection.
But sometimes I wear a hat indoors.
I do. Anytime I am giving a tour, a talk, or a presentation. It’s kinda part of the uniform.
No, that’s a fair point. But…
So, it really seems to depend on whether you’re content with bullshit from the tap or you require your bullshit to be poured from the tap into a plastic bottle and sold with a picture of a mountain spring on the label.
I suggest some form of protection if you’re cooking bacon. #personalexperience
Right. Makes sense in that case too.
For those who don’t read TET, Ogvorbis is a professional Carmen Miranda impersonator, IIRC.
Yeah that’s right, I hashtagged a blog post. So what.
A connoisseur of coward’s bacon, I see.
When you purchase yours at the store (of the yellowed back variety, I’m sure), do you wear leather gloves so as not to get a paper cut whilst handing the cashier your bills?
@Brownian:
“So, it really seems to depend on whether you’re content with bullshit from the tap or you require your bullshit to be poured from the tap into a plastic bottle and sold with a picture of a mountain spring on the label.”
Ha! Kind of, I guess. I mean, there is something to the point that it may be *in principle* possible to produce an argument to establish that belief in God is reasonable. Thus I know a lot of respectable skeptics who pay some attention to people like Plantinga just because, well, our own commitments – believing only what is reasonable to believe – force us to at least give the man’s efforts a hearing if they seem at all credible. We wouldn’t want to be like the fundies and just dismiss him out of hand. Of course, at this point in history, I think we’re PRETTY safe in betting nothing will come of it.
But honestly, I think WLC and Plantinga both get more traction with people who are, in the idiom you offer, connoisseurs of crap, believers who have brains but can’t quite bring themselves to use them, and who thus demand very, very subtle apologetics, so they can still reassure themselves that they are intellectually respectable, even if they DO cling to musty old myths.
When I purchase?
Pfft. I have people to do that for me.
Pah
Shaw
Of course it is. One can posit all sorts of reasonable deities. The trouble is that the only ones that aren’t blatantly inconsistent with the observable universe aren’t very interesting and wouldn’t have much to do with humans anyway, believing or not.
Of course, the acid test for whether it’s most reasonable to entertain belief in plausible deity A, plausible deity B,…, plausible deity N, or none at all really boils down to evidence, not argument.
Those of us follicly challenged who need a covered head to keep warm.
@53
I am with you there regarding Plantinga. The hardest part of my deconversion was actually reading him and Craig (and Bahnsen, and van Til, and Copan, etc etc etc…ugh) and going “Seriously? I can outthink these guys! …but, I’m just a geologist. I don’t have a degree in this stuff. What did I miss?” More accurately, the paranoia going through me when I thought this. They’re terrible.
Also with you on the bafflement over Loftus saying Craig is a good person. he isn’t. His entire worldview is worse than anything Lovecraft ever dreamed up in the depth of fever (Cthulhu can only kill you once) and his moral compass is twisting in the chaotic magnetic field of his own delusions. I’d pity the man except he’s actively and knowingly doing evil.
I must admit, I still don’t understand why the government provides that service.
@Brownian:
“the only ones that aren’t blatantly inconsistent with the observable universe aren’t very interesting and wouldn’t have much to do with humans anyway”
Heh. I like it.
Of course, these days, a lot of phil religion folks are fighting a rear-guard action. They’re not actually trying to generate arguments for the existence of God, merely to generate epistemic arguments that religious belief of any sort isn’t irrational. That’s not a very good sign for them, when you think about it. Especially since they’re also failing at that.
@Azuma Hazuki:
I love that you describe Craig’s view as “worse than Lovecraft.” That’s fantastic.
@Moggie:
Seriously? Our country would fall apart if not for the brave souls who incorporate the NACMI (National Association of Carmen Miranda Impersonators.) Whenever someone needs a fruity hat to cheer them up, who’s there? Whenever there’s a sweet salsa rythym, who’s there? Whenever you really, seriously are craving a banana, who’s there?
The NACMI, that’s who!
Is a helmet technically a hat?
Fucking libertarians.
Wow. I had no idea I was an actual professional.
Look on the bright side. I could be middle management.
Wasn’t that Ham?
That is an image I really didn’t need.
John left us? Aw shucks.
Yup. It’s a public health thing. The mechanisms are complex and poorly understood, but we do have definitive mortality and morbidity data that say that countries without publicly funding CMIs have far worse outcomes than those that have them.
I think they may be only tangentially related: that people in countries with CMIs have higher fruit intake, cha-cha more, and are protected from sun exposure, so CMIs serve as a proxy measure of other relevant behaviours. But without more data, this is no more than an educated guess.
How else could have Ron Paul fathered Rand Paul?
And, yes, I am grateful I never had to see that.
*ducks*
I resemble that remark.
Damned socialists. Depriving those poor people of the freedom of their morality and morbidity.
Arsemosis?
What I find the most odious about the way he’s been acting is that he’s making direct statements that have irrefutable implications, and then acting all huffy because people call him out on those implications with “Oh, but I didn’t directly say that“. No, but you clearly implied it, and you can’t claim to be a brilliant thinker and also completely ignorant of basic rhetoric. He’s hoisting himself on his own petard, there. Can’t be that smart and that stupid at the same time, so if John wants to be thought of as intelligent, he has to own the meanings of what he says.
MY-osis. Makes more libertarians.
“Ayn. Ayn! AYN!” [Collapses on mattress certified by government inspectors not to be stuffed with human corpses.]
“Honey—why do you scream the German indefinite article when you orgasm?”
“Zzz-snort!—nanny statezzzzzzz!”
[Looks at watch.] “Thirteen seconds—that’s a new record.” [Reaches into nighttable for vibrator hidden under Ron Paul campaign material.]</i
Wait a minute?
The government is hiring Carmen Miranda impersonators to have sex with libertarians?
What the fuck is going on in this country?
I know. The only thing we like more than tyranny is deincentivising our innovative betters to stop them from thinking outside the box.
McCain/Palin didn’t win, and now look what happened.
Brownian, you are a sick and twisted little fuck.
Just in case no one else let you in on that little secret.
Wait, it was you that chased away John Loftus!
In a test tube.
Not really. Rand Paul required no siring. See, he’s not lazy like you liberals, always looking for someone to donate a motile gamete just so you can “be born”. And while you are enquiring, no, he didn’t need a womb to gestate in either. He gestated just fine all by himself, thank you very much, in a small yurt that he built from carpet remnants.
Nope. Rand pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.
I would need more pay. Big time.
Besides, Wife is the one who works a streetcorner, not me. I’m jsut an evil federal worker destroying jobs and oppressing the real ‘Merkins.
Why does everyone keep saying that to me?!
@Brownian:
And the followup to that – http://xkcd.com/1013/
Oh come on.
Ron Paul is a doctor. He probably just hung around the morgues and cemeteries, collected some no longer used parts, and made his own copy of himself.
It expains a lot.
There have been lots of documentaries on how this works. Next time you see a TV show with the name Frankenstein in it, take notes.
And the brain he used for Rand? Did it formerly belong to someone named Abby?
Also, I’m not little. The GF™ and I have been hitting the gym.
Now I am flashing to the scene in Young Frankenstein when Victor is explaining that all the body parts for the creature will have to be larger then average.
AAAAUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!
He would have an enormous schwanzstucker.
Sweet mystery of life at last I found you…
Could be.
More likely it was some woman named Ayn.
Personally, I don’t like how FreeThoughtBlogs has gotten to be so much like a clique (aside from PZ of course). I stopped reading most of them because they all say the same stuff and they spend too much time creating drama within the community. I guess Loftus felt left out of the clique. Good for him. I’ll be checking his blog out more now.
Raven, Young Frankenstein reference.
Abby.
Abby Normal.
Ba-bye, dangeroustalk.
Oh, a few indoor hat wearers then? One because he’s (I’m assuming a ‘he’) ‘folically challenged’. So am I, but I don’t wear a hat to keep my hair in. I use box for that.
Did Loftus really defend Craig defending genocide on the grounds that Craig is a nice guy and doesn’t actually believe what he spouts? I don’t believe Craig is ‘a nice guy’ at all. I think he’s a lying, devious, nasty little weasel. When he debated Brian Edwards (I think that’s his name) on a radio show broadcast in New Zealand, Craig got the most phone-in votes (though Edwards clearly won the bloody debate hands down) and won $2,000 for a charity of his choice. Who do you think he gave it to? Blindness? Homeless? Dementia? Children’s Cancer Charity? Not a bit of it. He gave it to a fucking Campus Crusade for Christ outfit. A crowd of little miniature loons, just like himself! What a bastard!
…’a’ box, even.
rownian says:
21 February 2012 at 12:34 pm
I know. The only thing we like more than tyranny is deincentivising our innovative betters to stop them from thinking outside the box.
Isn’t that a form of birth control?
Is that what Loftus means when he claims to be a Master deBater?
I dont’ care whether Craig really believes in genocide. I think that most fucking people who have advocated genocide, including those who have organized it or participated in it didn’t believe in it. All they had to do was detach themselves enough so that it went from being murder to a day job. I care about what he does not some metaphorical or metaphysical taint on his soul.
This is also why I have trouble squaring certain ‘left’ atheists’s friendship with people who I consider moral monsters. Even if Limbaugh and Coulter are just putting on acts they are having a real world effect that is damaging people you claim to give a shit about. But no, it’s so easy apparently for the rich white man to say “hey I care about blacks/gays/etc…my friends may preach against them and their destruction but I can put that aside and still be friends with them!”. You know…sometimes being a good friend means not putting up with a friends crap and letting them know it’s crap. Friendship sometimes shouldn’t be unconditional.
More like a master debaser.
Ooooooooooh what is it that I said?
Enjoy your new fan club of knuckle dragging mouth breathers who like you because of your presented bigotry. I’d like to say that the ‘support’ would be an eye opener but I think we’ve all seen that usually people take the approval of horrible people as approval and just double down.
I’m going to assume this is the same dangeroustalk who used the blogspace and blogroll at Atheist Nexus to divert traffic to his own blog. His posts at Nexus would consist of a sentence or two, then a “read the rest of this post” that linked to his own site.
I’m not surprised that he would enjoy Loftus’ blog; he showed us some time ago that he appreciates those sorts of self-serving, self-important qualities.
Yeah, bye.
nmcc #34,
I found two on youtube via “john loftus debate” in google. One vs Dinesh D’Souza and one vs David Wood.
Perhaps it’s the one you missed that will demonstrate his debating brilliance. You’ll have to check on this yourself, however, because I’m already a little nauseous from too much coffee and don’t want to risk watching either right now.
A quick Google search turns up a similar pattern of nothing but blogwhoring here, too.
Bye, dangeroustalk. If it makes you feel more comfortable about leaving, I can replicate the entirety of your contribution to humanity while you’re gone:
“Hey, everyone! My only reason for coming here is to drum up commenters, but pretend I said something of value. And don’t forget to visit dangeroustalk.net!”
There’s also this post by Greta Christina criticising Staks Rosch of the self-styled ‘progressive blog’ Dangerous Talk for equating the seeking of perspectives of women and minorities as ‘tokenism’, in case you thought the comment about cliques was actually about Loftus, rather than being a bit of self-serving bullshit by a disingenuous dipshit.
Anyway, looks like Staks is doing alright. Nothing says “I’m not part of a clique” like a blog with few to no comments.
Of course, nothing says “I’m not part of a clique but oh, God, why don’t people like me?” like leaving blogwhoring comments everywhere.
Matt Penfold, #25:
Why didn’t he just ask them to identify their levels of education in comments with their handles attached? Then he could know which ones to take seriously. /snark
Okstop, #30: Thanks. :)
Brownian, #43: Oh, just suck it up. Your humility routine is more than we can swallow.
Og:
Ray Comfort.
Brownian, #70:
Marketed in Libertopia as The Invisible Hand™.
Damn. Well, it was close. Ham is a comfort food, right?
For those who might be interested, here’s a picture of Ogvorbis at work.
“Isn’t that a form of birth control?”
What, wearing a hat indoors?
You Can Leave Your Hat On
I thought it was a euphemism. As in, John Thomas isn’t getting in here, not without a hat on.
@ Brownian,
I don’t know, for my part maybe because I have a permanent image of you with nothing on but a brown fedora and a maid’s apron.
Is it wrong that that image is still preferable to fucking lbertarians?
When Loftus was challenged, he said he was serious. He didn’t disambiguate. Did he intend a threat? I don’t know. Was it unreasonable to think so? Depends on the context, the reader’s as well as that of Loftus. I think you are arrogant to assume that because not all people don’t drew the same conclusions as you, that they are unreasonable.
The fact that most of the time such phrases are metaphorical, or even bluster, just creates confusion; it does not mean that threats are non-existent. Are you trying to tell us that Loftus, who taught critical thinking, was unaware of a possible literal interpretation?
I gather that you have never been seriously threatened with death by someone slightly unstable. I have been. Lots of brandishing of guns and knives. It was all about control. Pet animals shot. One of the phrases I heard a lot was: “You think I’m joking. Just try me.”
If I had never heard a real death threat myself, I might also have not heard one in Loftus’s words.
Of course not. I’m really hot, so it’s kind of a given.
My opinion: JWL’s expectations of a deferential commentariat here at FTB were dashed, and he didn’t take it well.
(Those grapes were sour, anyway!)
Excellent thread! Especially that parts that aren’t about Loftus.
@pentatomid – No pushing in! Take a number and get in line for the ghey secks with Brownian, just like everybody else.
What you expect from a community whose 2nd most common trait after atheism is Asperger’s syndrome? Loftus is a hack: his writing is poor, his debate skills are severely lacking, and his ego is overblown. He wonders why WLC won’t debate him? Oh I don’t know maybe because he got his ass handed to him by Dinesh D’souza in a debate. Dinesh fucking D’souza, the Dean Koontz of apologetics. I get that you won’t win every debate, but if your gonna try to make a career out of atheism you better be able to hold your own against D’souza and that was just embarrassing to watch, I got that funny feeling in my stomach when you feel embarrassed for someone else and that was just watching it on youtube, I pity the audience in attendance. Good riddance. It’s about time the electronic trash took itself out.
Oh. Well, we already have a token one of those.
John Loftus,
Fuck you John Loftus.
Are you still following this thread? It is all about you, so I imagine your vanity is forcing you to.
I hope you are, so you can read your deserved abuse. Fuck off.
Is that true? I’d bet that the second most common trait is much more ubiquitous. Just off the top of my head, it’s probably more accurate to say that this community’s second most common trait is not having Kuru (and no offence intended to any Kuru-infected atheist Fore Pharyngulites).
Do you have data on this?
How dare you insult Dean Koontz this way. He may not be a “great writer*”, but he strings words together in coherent sentences more often than not.
AE:
The mental images that this conjures up is simply priceless.
I laughed so hard that I peed a little. :D
upagainsttheropes:
Wut?
You know what? Never mind, I don’t really care what you have to say. I’ve just written you off as a nasty little shit.
If I may quote a compatriot here: Asshole is not on the spectrum
“How tragic, America has lost one of its….authors”
He does however have a hate on for atheists that in later works revs up into cartoonish proportions.
And this is what I love about Pharyngula. Georgeous riffing on Brownian in uncompromising positions and all sorts of weird and wonderful images, but nobody, but nobody, gets to make up their own facts.
Ing:
No kidding.
His last few books have been essentially wanking off over how great Catholicism and his goddamned dog are.
We get it, Dean! God and your dead fucking dog are your bffs! You can really stop writing shitty thrillers now.
Audley: I also peed a little.
W.A. Ing: Koontz sees himself as a G.K. Chesterton-like figure apparently. I read one of his books, Strangers as a child. I think it’s summary on Wikipedia nearly captures it in full:
*spoiler alert*
‘high-desert’ indeed.
This of course has nothing to do with Loftus or his new blog. Or hats made of fruit, for that matter. Or the ghey seks with Brownian.
I came out as a non-aspie asshole. Won’t you join me?
AE:
It’s the yurt, I think.
lolwut?
No, that would be the cranberry juice. Y’urt helps with the other thing.
I was imagining more his Frankenstine series where the evil atheist evolutionary scientist who is into bdsm because kink is evil kills his clone wife because she slurps soup because there is no god and thus nay nay he can!
Ing:
Ah. I haven’t read that series, but I think Mr Darkheart did.
The last Koontz novel that I read was The Darkest Evening of the Year. It was about this fucking super-dog, which was based on Koontz’s dead dog (according to the acknowledgement blurb, anyway). And, you know, the “pure hearted” triumphing over evil and all that rot.
Blech.
Is that really one of his series? [Checks Wikipedia.] Holy fucking shit.
On the other hand, this explains why he would describe himself as becoming “engaged, more and more as the years went by, by the intellectual rigor that lies behind the Catholic Church”: it’s an “Aww, look: he thinks he’s people” thing.
Pa Paul is an obstetrician.
My guess is that he just took a bit of work back home with him. It’s not like we haven’t all done it. A ream of paper here, a baby there – eins bier.
I can’t see him getting away with taking a whole baby home. Baby parts, maybe.
[OT]
Re Dean Koontz and Catholicism; I was very (very!) disappointed with Tim Powers’ Declare for that very reason (riff to Orson Scott Card and Mormonism).
(I doubt I shall read any more of his works)
Maybe people should have asked if he was literal if that’s what they wanted to know. Serious only means that he does intend to do what he said. It doesn’t clarify what he meant.
Oh, you’d be surprised the places they can apparently crawl. I’m not a parent, but I have friends that are. Whenever I’ve invited them over in the past, they ask if my place is ‘babyproof’. I’ve no idea how to even attempt to do such a thing, so I figure if they’re anything like as hard to get rid of as bedbugs, I don’t want to even bother with exterminators and that shit, hence the invitations are in the past.
So, maybe that’s what happened with the Pauls.
Ace of Sevens @132, you apparently forget he (eventually) felt the need to apologise for that remark.
(If you didn’t, then you’re being disingenuous)
@Ace of Sevens:
That was might thought. I never for an instant thought that John meant anything other than rhetorical guns, nor do I think it would be reasonable to conclude anything else. Nothing about the man or the context of his comments indicated otherwise.
Still, even if we’re just talking about rhetorical assaults, it’s a shitty thing to say. As I noted earlier, if you think that it’s a bad thing that someone or a group of someones are making rhetorical attacks on you, how on earth do you come to the conclusion that the morally acceptable thing to do is to make rhetorical attacks right back?
*my thought
grrr.
You lack imagination.
Have you any idea how many false legs are to be found in Lost Items. And somehow they’re rarely reclaimed. (Possibly because the owners can’t go and require about them.)
I liked the first super-dog one he did I’ll admit. It was at the point where there was an atheist doctor who existed a) to provide exposition of the family sired by an intersex woman self impregnating (yes really) b) to inform everyone that he doesn’t give a shit about his patients because he’s an atheist c) to yell at the protagonist that he shouldn’t care because “we’re just meat!”
I imagined Paul just coughed up an egg that Rand hatched out of
lolwut?
lolwut?
lol*sob*wut?
Osktop,
Just out of interest, under what type of circumstances would you allow a non-metaphorical reading to be reasonable?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bad_Place
The family in question is highly religious…but Protestant
Also the main villain is evil because he has 4 testicles and no penis, thus extra testosterone with no way of release.
Hmmph – another corporate apologist…
I assumed Libertarians just released clouds of gametes into the currents. Each one being an island and all.
1. Not knowing John Loftus, I personally had no way to differentiate between his rhetorical “guns” and his real ones, and on the internet people can’t be expected to have that much context. It’s not an idiomatic expression I’m familiar with.
2. I didn’t know who Carmen Miranda was and decided that until I finished the thread and googled her name, I would provisionally pretend Carmen Sandiego was meant. (Because she has a hat.) Now I’m okay with having Carmen Miranda impersonators but I also want Carmen Sandiego ones.
3. I wear hats indoors. Why? Because I look damn cute in hats. Screw modesty. (Also it’s a calming thing. I usually wear a big jacket too when I feel like I need my hat.)
4. I love this thread.
Ing:
lolwut?
Ing, you’ve gotta stop– this is just getting fucking redonkulous!
Yeah, that’s a lot of bollocks.
@Audley
100% serious. Super swear
Other great character moments from Mr. Koontz!
Warning: possible low level trigger?
Clemenza: “I know you just killed a man trying to rape you but…coffee?”
Fuck you, you ignorant sack of shit.
For those who are familiar with the various ditties about Lydia Pinkham and her Vegetable Compound, here’s a verse that seems appropriate:
Ing:
There’s a Mass Effect joke in there somewhere…
:p
I’m curious now. Was there ever a point at which Dean Koontz was not a hack?
@Audley
Bah! He went down like a punk. Didn’t have the quads to be a real villain!
This is either a poorly-supported argument of truth or a nasty little crack. You are aware, aren’t you ropes, that Asperger’s is a real thing that negatively impacts the lives of actual people, right? I work with a few kids who have been diagnosed with AS and they have a difficult time socializing with their peers, communicating, and fitting in. This causes a fair amount of discomfort and frustration for the kids and their parents. Please explain yourself, Mr./Ms. upagainsttheropes.
Exactly. You take a piece here, a piece there, and after a few years you’ve got enough that you can make a new one yourself.
On a briefly serious moment: no, it’s not at all obvious to the whole world that “turning my guns” on someone is a metaphor.
Not all of us are from the US and use the same metaphors. Not all of use even have English as a first language. The US attitude to guns is a weirdness to most of the rest of the first world. The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords suggests that the line between metaphor and reality can be rather thin. Only in the US could you say a phrase like “a recent school shooting” without appending “in the US”.
I know that not all US people are gun-crazy. Not even all those who own guns are gun-crazy. But enough seem to be that way inclined to allow it to be a reasonable possibility.
It’s most likely a combination of “sneering at The Other because he’s a sack of shit” and willful misunderstanding of what is meant by “difficulties with empathy.”
@petejohn
Could be either, both or neither. What’s your problem with people with Aspergers? Lots of intelligent people have it. Some adults make it with it. You found employment from it. Ever think what happened to those kids who came before the diagnosis or can’t afford your services? I’m gonna guess some of them may have landed here… A lack of social graces may run across this fault line but there is no shortage of ideas. It’s to be expected that earthquakes happen amongst such lines and the observation leaves no fault.
If there were a slight slightly slighted, all apologies, I’m not excluded from my own commentary.
You cannot possibly fail to be aware that scapegoating people with ASDs for behavior stemming from arrogance and entitlement in the community has been epidemic since at least the time of elevatorgate. If you’re not doing that, why are you working so hard to fit the pattern?
Blockquote fail. Awesome. Second paragraph is mine, obviously.
@Ca…blah blah blah smug avatar
like your blogquote fail and your second paragraph… obviously not everything is about you meaning “us.”
@Azkyroth
you should stick to your profanities you’re better at them. What’s your next argument: all wars are caused by religion? Try to stay on topic what does anything I said have to do with elevatorgate?
I apologize again if it didn’t come across in my previous statement about slights. Azkyroth and Cass, you’re all well adjusted human beings maybe one of you should take on D’souza you got enough piss and vinegar to fill a tanker.
The worst part about reinstalling is forgetting to carry over my killfile.
Dumbass, your post smeared people with Asperger’s.
That’s “us.”
Knock it the fuck off with your stupid thoughtless babbling or get the fuck out.
No. Just another government agency project.
If you go back and actually read the four day, five thread MRA-athon about Rebecca Watson, you will notice that one of the innerradicable memes was that the guy who propositioned her had Aspbergers and thus was not being an asshole but merely being who he was and thus was not his fault. This was deconstructed twelve ways from Hyundai and it still keeps coming up. So yes, referring to all atheists as likely Aspbergers people really does harken back to that hellhole.
http://loftusunleashed.blogspot.com/2012/02/some-things-i-know-that-freethought.html
Huh. I wonder if I should click on that link.
Geez louise. John, it’s hard to take seriously your claim that you just want this issue to die when you keep bringing it back up. The comments had gotten WAY off-topic (Dean Koontz! Carmen Miranda! Asperger’s Syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders!) and weren’t even about you any more. Way to prove the truth of you_monster upthread.
The leash is off.
John has clearly learned much from Craig’s style of debate.
John sure spends a lot of time on this blog for having left it. You know John I hope you don’t make the mistake to think that just because you alien atheists that makes you attractive to theists
Are you, or are you not, asserting that Loftus’ behavior is a symptom of an autism spectrum disorder?
Well, coward?