It’s not what I would have picked if I had a choice, but it seems that my amazing mutant superpower is the ability to effortlessly drive people insane. I guess it’s not surprising that my talent would be both sinister and Lovecraftian, but I’d rather be able to fly or fire lasers out of my eyes — heck, even Aquaman’s powers would be kind of cool.
Ah, well … with great power comes great responsibility. Rather than afflicting innocent cognitive psychologists, who should I reduce to gibbering madness next? I tried doing a mind blast on Osama Bin Laden and GW Bush, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. My powers seem to be useless on most creationists, too. This is very disappointing!
“My powers seem to be useless on most creationists, too”
If you used the powers and succeeded, how could we tell?
wow, i just went to the blog you linked and what a whiner! I mean, first he completely misses the point, then he calls atheists who aren’t quiet all privileged and full of themselves.
That’s pathetic. Oh well. As has been said before, atheists are people, smart and stupid, looks like this was a view of the latter.
I concur with s9. Your powers are useless against the already insane.
At least you _got_ a power. All I have are stupid webbed toes. :-P BTW, while we’re on the subject of comic book science, I’m sure you will be pleased to know that The Earth is GROWING! Or, more likely, hatching…
Damn, and I thought *PZ* was childish!
I’m sorry I clicked over there – I found his rant to be, well, what I said:
Chris, you’re engaging in hyperbole – violence? Actually, your responses here appear hysterical (as in hysteria). I resent your use of the word violence very much. You’re a cognitive psychologist? What’s going on with you here? You’re too off base. Way too off.
(Is it just me or does he sound a tad off the rails?)
Tyler and I are a bit beyond fumed on this.
I urge you all to give GreedyGreedyAlgorithms the site hit instead of Mixing Memory.
Man, my time is so limited, I can’t follow all the blogs I would if I was retired or otherwise unemployed. Then I could keep up with all the terminology. I followed the link and was mostly befuddled by the article. What the hell is a “nouveau atheist” anyway? One who overtly says what s/he thinks? Help me here.
“a tad off the rails”? Are you belittling my super power? It’s more like those Thuggees in the mining cart in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — launched off the rails, tumbling end over end, plummeting into a lava-filled chasm.
It’s a shame, too — I’ve never disliked Chris’s blog, but a few people around here do have an extreme allergic reaction to me.
When I read that post, the first thing that popped into my mind was this photo:
Talk about a case of Just Not Getting It….
Damn you interwebs! Link instead.
Also, it occurs to me that the suffragists were primarily white upper-middle class women… I guess that means we can ignore their demands too! [/snark]
Hey, that’s a lot cooler than Mr. Raven’s superpower–we can be out walking or driving around, and I’ll delightedly point out a dog walking on a leash for him to see. When Mr. Raven looks at the dog I point out to him, it almost invariably decides to take a shit right then and there. As inexplicable as it is, we’ve been gathering this data for years now. *There’s* a useless superpower, although at least Mr. Raven uses it for good and not for evil.
I don’t think I’ll be reading Mixing Memory anymore, either–censoring comments (unless they’re from Charlie Wagner-caliber trolls, which Larry certainly isn’t) is the kind of stuff I’d expect from the ID sites, not ScienceBlogs.
I guess what he’s saying is that atheists tend to be very bourgeois, in a Marxist sort of sense.
But that would make them no different from many revolutionaries — the American one, the French one, and many others have had very bourgeois leaders. Back in the 18th cy., Samuel Johnson of his famous dictionary noted that many of those who shouted so loud about freedom were themselves slaveowners.
You have the power! You, RavenT! Go out of your way to point out dogs that are walking in areas that suffer from a lack of compostable organic materials! YOU can make the world a richer, more fruitful and less pointlessly fetid place!
A friend of mine has the power to make streetlights go out whenever she walks under them. (It’s kinda hard to see how that could be useful in fighting crime.)
I left a stupid comment on Mixingmemory. Sigh.
Why was larry’s comments deleted? Did he say something that raised a valid point?
I’m tickled by his assertion that this is an act of white, male, ex-protestant, middle class attention whoring. When a 16 year-old wants to hold themselves out from the norm and look down on everyone, they dye their hair and listen to a-melodic music, when a 46 year-old (random age) wants the same thing, they blog about atheism.
In short: PZ is a goth girl, apparently.
My cunning plan unravels. Yes, I am the teenaged girl, while Skatje is the college professor. At least we fooled everyone for almost 4 years now.
PZ:
Chris’s blog is actually very good reading on many topics … just not anything directly related to outspoken atheists. I try to ignore those posts, and read his other work, which is very good, but somehow I only end up commenting on the posts which upset me.
cv:
Larry has a post about it here .
Sadly I don’t have the original text of his comment, but the ‘poke’ went something like: ‘I was called a moron in 5th grade. Making fun of my name didn’t work for ten-year-olds, and it doesn’t work for you either.’ Larry also tried to explain why he thought Chris’s argument was a strawman.
What the hell is a “nouveau atheist” anyway?
One that will taunt you in a french accent-a!
Chris put Larry’s comment back up after much reaming, but even then he did it with a childish, insulting edit. Meanwhile, Larry’s (now re-posted) comment was in fact quite polite and to the point. And given how often I’ve read extreme and ill-considered rudeness written by Larry, this is worthy of note.
I don’t know why I even bothered to post a response to Chris’ crazy, ill-conceived vitriol – but I did. The most relevant part of my response was a link to this oft-cited study of American attitudes towards atheists, which I thought I’d also link to here for the benefit of those who’ve not previously encountered it.
As I’ve said before, atheists have the advantage over some other oppressed groups (women, ethnic groups) that we aren’t easily and visibly identifiable as such. But since Americans are on average more distrustful and suspicious of atheists than they are of homosexuals (really – read the linked study), those of us who do not remain anonymous are subject to much more knee-jerk prejudice and bigotry than the “What are you atheists so worked up about?” idiots* realize. Chris accuses those he derisively labels “nouveau atheists” of being privileged and sheltered, but I think he is the one who has been sheltering himself from the real world. You know, the world where extremist religious fanatics are setting the agenda for one political party (and many elements of the other party fearfully kow-tow to or accommodate that agenda rather than fighting it) – and that’s just in the U.S., which supposedly has freedom of religion and no religious tests for public office.
*Yes, idiots. I’m sorry, Chris is just an effing moron on this issue, however bright he may be otherwise.
I’m reminded of the (superb) atheist singer songwriter Vic Chesnutt.
Apparently, he used to sit in his wheelchair (he’s a quadriplegic) on streets in Georgia holding up a sign saying ‘There is no God’ and arguing with people about religion.
Now, that’s what I call a militant atheist!
——————————————
BTW, is there anything dumber than calling Larry Moran, Larry ‘Moron’ at the start of a post and then complaining about atheists being soooo rude?
If you’re going to insult someone, at least be half-clever.
I really have only one thing to say: what an asshole.
*laugh* I used to play chess with two other fellows. One could trounce me. I could trounce the other. Yet he could trounce the one who trounced me.
That bizzare circle is close to forming in Scienceblogs. I generally consider PZ to get irrationally nuts when the subject of Ed Brayton comes up, yet am a fan otherwise. I enjoy Chris’ writing other than when the subject is PZ (or us other uppity/new/nouveaux/dawkins atheists). Now I just need to find a Chris topic that makes Ed Brayton go irrational to be complete.
Anyway, I used to just be a quiet atheist. Then I just wanted the dueling atheist factions to shut up. More and more I am becoming convinced that in your face zealotry is desperately needed. Concerns me that it took atheists telling atheists to shut up to break loose my complacency.
As a fire-and-brimstone atheist, I hate to say it, but Chris’ tirade illustrates why framing really is important to the New Atheist movement. He’s a fellow atheist, but even he doesn’t seem to get what all the fuss is about, and why we should be militant.
There are real, practical reasons why we want a more secular society. Why do we want people to be less superstitious? There are a number of bread-and-butter issues that are negatively affected by conservative religious organizations. As long as they have sway, they are going to be directing public policy in ways that are detrimental to all – atheists and theists alike. On issues like stem cell research, family planning/contraception, science education, and numerous gender equality issues, religiously conservative elements in our society have taken positions that are antipodal to the common good. These same religious folks seem to also have a lot of other bad ideas they want to implement, too: bringing race-bating back into vogue, ignoring global warming, and starting unnecessary wars, for example. If we can sap them of their influence at the grassroots level, and encourage people to espouse humanist values (preferably secular humanism, but religious humanism will do nicely in a pinch, too), we have a better chance at a better life for everybody.
Not that I know Chris well enough to imply anything personal, but sometimes I ponder that some psychologists might be drawn into the business by their own abnormal psychology. I’m not trying to come off as saner-than-thou, especially when you consider how I might have had occasion to form opinions on the matter, but I’m not terribly surprised to see psychologists with odd ideas.
But at least he’s not hostile, contemptuous, or feeling superior when he calls out juvenile insults, deletes comments of those whom he deems unworthy, and jumps at a strawman rather than placing the suffrage comparison in context and recalling that the comparison was originally made to criticize us uppity, privileged bourgeois.
Wow. That guy was really a jerk, even engaging in name-calling. He seemed to get flipped out with the mildest of criticism. His point was that “meanie” atheists should just shut up, pretty much proving your point.
Only PZ would think Aquaman had cool powers ;)
I thought kesynia’s post was quite good and not stupid at all. I got a little worked up though. I’m afraid I indulged in a little name calling and hyperbole, though. Maybe I should just be a good little quiet atheist?
Nah, screw it. I’m gonna PZ it up all the way!
Keep up the good work PZ!
Wow. So, his basic argument is “How dare those privileged people compare themselves to previous people who really had it rough!”
Funny, isn’t that what homophobes have been saying about comparisons between the gay rights and civil rights movements for years now?
What’s funny is that the moderates hold up EO Wilson as their standard bearer against the nasty bourgeois atheist professor hordes. Yet a couple of decades ago, who was the great bourgeois determinist Satan? Did that pitcher of ice water exorcise the bourgeois out of him or something?
I don’t want to condemn Chris’ site wholesale (I’ve just read the one article), but I have to say that his claim about “nouveau atheists” being predominantly white, middle-class men strikes me as a baseless generalization. It is certainly not true in my circles.
This may not be the right place to start a “census poll”, but let me say here that I am a “nouveau atheist” (last time I use that term, ever), and I am a white, middle-class lesbian. Oddly enough, so is my partner.
One more observation… When women take a stand against religiosity, it is usually targeted at very specific manifestations, such as restrictions on access to birth control or abortion services. The anger is the same, it’s just expressed differently because it is felt differently. This may contribute to the notion that radical atheism is a “guy thing”.
Is it the case that these last few weeks have seen the first sort-of widespread palpable level of debate and disagreement among Scienceblogs.com bloggers? Are we witnessing the dawn of a new era? Or have I just not noticed this before or am I otherwise being ignorant?
Don’t dispair, PZ, it could be worse. A while back my son and I passed some time during a car ride by trying to think of the lamest superpowers that we could. Some gems from that ride were:
-Narcaleptic Man! Has the power drop into a deep slumber at any moment.
-Inviso-boy! Can turn invisible, but only when someone isn’t looking (OK, stole that from Mystery Men)
-Fuzzy Man! Has the power to grow hair at twice the speed of a normal man.
You get the idea.
OEJ
Greg Laden:
Were you around here last Thanksgiving? The “appeaser” free-for-all then was significantly more unpleasant than the fr*ming kerfluffle of recent days.
Greg said: “Is it the case that these last few weeks have seen the first sort-of widespread palpable level of debate and disagreement among Scienceblogs.com bloggers?”
There were a couple of polite vs. angry atheist smack-downs last year…the “Chamberlain atheist” label sprouted out of one of them. But weren’t you hanging around these parts back then?
RavenT said: “…we can be out walking or driving around, and I’ll delightedly point out a dog walking on a leash for him to see. When Mr. Raven looks at the dog I point out to him, it almost invariably decides to take a shit right then and there.”
Driving? As in the dog is sitting in your car? I hope I’m misinterpreting you, because that’s the kind of thing that I don’t think I’d do more than once. Or maybe this is one of those scientist vs. ordinary person deals.
polite vs. angry atheist smack-downs
Make that “effete vs. assertive”. I’ve got to remember to pick my own framing and not use the opponent’s.
Uh, RavenT, it occurs to me that I had a serious case of pronoun confusion when I was reading your comment, so please ignore what I just said!
So, let’s recap:
Moderate Atheist: No one ever achieved social change by being rude.
Militant Atheist: The Suffragists were rude.
ModA: No, they weren’t.
MilA: Feminists, a little help please?
Feminists: [Present big honking pile of testimony as to Suffragist rudeness.]
ModA: Well, okay. But what MLK? Ghandi? Mandela?
MilA: Montgomery bus boycott, Salt March, Armed ANC militias.
ModA: How dare you compare yourselves to Suffragists!
Is that pretty much the gist of it? Are we now engaged in a Global War Against Limited Analogies?
If you read any sort of military fiction, you will find the authors consider that very ability more important in the field than knowing how to dig a trench to shit in.
Were you around here last Thanksgiving?
I have a good friend who is a spy but blogs about her experiences as such. She sent me the link to her blog last year, and I read it. From then until last December, I had hardly ever read any blog, including this one, or at least not with the consistency needed to see patterns. So, I totally missed Thanksgiving, but by only a few days!
And my apologies to Mr.Raven, as well! I think I had better stop now…
I usually like Chris’s posts, but this one evoked a severe “what the hell is his problem? Was he dropped on his head as a child?”-response. I understand atheists who don’t want to become angry atheists like PZ because it’s not their style, and that’s fine. But when these non-angry atheists become angry (not to mention rude and weird) at the angry atheists, it just doesn’t make sense.
Oh, and as a former competitive swimmer, I think Aquaman has cool powers. His powers would have made my life easier. Hell, even webbed toes wouldn’t hurt.
My favorite superhero is Handyman. Hes a quadriplegic whose special power lets him move around like a normal person.
Oh, didn’t you know? Your kiai/chi only works on your followers!
(I’m jokin’, don’t disemvowel me!)
After reading Chris’s last comment in the linked thread, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Chris does not live in a small-ti-middle-sized town in the Bible Belt.
And why is my mutant superpower the ability to detect even a single grain of pollen and expel it from my body with a stupendously powerful sneeze attack? Can I trade it for something else?
Is that pretty much the gist of it? Are we now engaged in a Global War Against Limited Analogies?
Posted by: HP | April 24, 2007 10:08 AM
LMAO! And, spurious conclusions.
1. not genuine, authentic, or true; not from the claimed, pretended, or proper source; counterfeit.
I drives me berserk how people can list and discuss everything relevant, and then when it seems they actually do understand, they come up with the exact opposite of what is supported! Like, “Mission Accomplished”
PZ, if you can drive these people insane, you owe the world to do it, and you might even win the Nobel prize for Superheroes!
No worries, Kurt.
There may be something to that–much as the Catholic Church used to have an index of banned books, my friends have an index of topics that I am absolutely not permitted to discuss over dinner.
For example, who knew that talking about the possible origin of the caduceus in the stick that was used to extract the guinea worm an inch or two a day from an afflicted limb, while eating phad thai with chopsticks, would squick anyone? Apparently, it can.
So no worries–in much the same way, I can imagine multiple scenarios where I’d end up driving around with dogs shitting in my car. It was an understandable misreading.
Baratos:
It’s been done. Look up Marvel’s Iron Man.
Well, in Chris case it doesn’t take much. Just discuss atheism, and off he goes.
Btw, he goes off on a lot of things. I’m not sure I have seen any comments from him on any thread that eventually spins into an emotive state. So to be fair to his reliance on emotions, I have stopped reading all his posts. I just don’t feel like it. ;-) And since he considered censor comments just for being negative I’m glad I did.
But the persecution projection he shows here may explain a lot.
I like it! Even a blind hen… excuse me, a blindly insane hen. Chris feels it is tacky, I think it is sweet.
And that is about as much as is worth to engage in his slanted, ranted view of ‘suffratheists’.
I’m Sexy Hair Man. No, my hair take a recent trim to make sexy – but it doesn’t take much to make it look like I just had sex. (Or took a nap – my fellow employees often looks suspiciously on me when that happens.)
And as for RavenT’s significant other, the awesome power involves an inexplicable correlation. The hair invariably picks out the times a hot woman will pass by to get an, uh, ‘rejection’ of locks. I’m not sure the comfy bedroom look is entirely bad in these circumstances, though. :-)
Bad Hair Day Man just doesn’t have the right ring to it.
Well, in Chris case it doesn’t take much. Just discuss atheism, and off he goes.
Btw, he goes off on a lot of things. I’m not sure I have seen any comments from him on any thread that eventually spins into an emotive state. So to be fair to his reliance on emotions, I have stopped reading all his posts. I just don’t feel like it. ;-) And since he considered censor comments just for being negative I’m glad I did.
But the persecution projection he shows here may explain a lot.
I like it! Even a blind hen… excuse me, a blindly insane hen. Chris feels it is tacky, I think it is sweet.
And that is about as much as is worth to engage in his slanted, ranted view of ‘suffratheists’.
I’m Sexy Hair Man. No, my hair take a recent trim to make sexy – but it doesn’t take much to make it look like I just had sex. (Or took a nap – my fellow employees often looks suspiciously on me when that happens.)
And as for RavenT’s significant other, the awesome power involves an inexplicable correlation. The hair invariably picks out the times a hot woman will pass by to get an, uh, ‘rejection’ of locks. I’m not sure the comfy bedroom look is entirely bad in these circumstances, though. :-)
Bad Hair Day Man just doesn’t have the right ring to it.
RavenT:
(slaps forehead)
So that explains it! Why didn’t They tell me years ago?
So you’re disqualified from representing a persecuted minority if you’re also a member of various unpersecuted majorities? Well, screw MLK, I guess. What’s a middle-class, college-educated, church-going religious male know about persecution? And Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Hah! Not only was she religious, well-educated, and middle-class, she was white! Poser.
Clearly, atheists deserve no respect until we can find a half-black, half-Arab homeless lesbian witch to represent us.
Aquaman has tons of cool powers by any standard–superstrength, superspeed, telepathy, enhanced senses, etc. For a decade or so, he had a cybernetic harpoon for a hand, then a magic water hand that could heal people and work magic and all sorts of stuff.
It’s just that he spends most of his time on a team with people who can drop-kick the moon and see across light-years, so the only thing he excels at by comparison is, well, talking to fish.
A correlation which we know is significant because of its low pee-value.
But Handyman is funnier. He was all, “Holy shit! Guys, I can put on clothing all by myself! I bet I could take a shower with no more than two people helping me!”
Telepathy… only with fish, isn’t it? Superspeed… if by that you only mean, he swims really fast.
When he had a hook, that was cool. When he had the water hand, that was so vaguely defined there was no point. What could it do? Where did that neo-Arthurian stuff come from, and wasn’t that real estate pretty well taken in the DCU already? (Did he ever find out more? The only issues of his comic that I’ve bought were two or three issues soon after the relaunch where he got that hand.)
I kinda like how he’s been handled on “Smallville,” just because they’re being up-front about it. “All I get is fish jokes.” He’s not there to be a hero, he’s there to be the cavalry in a major crisis, and the rest of the time, an annoying foil and who occasionally creates ethically complicated situations for the real heroes. And it’s not like there’s anything wrong with that.
Off topic of atheism, on topic for Aquaman- I don’t have a link, sorry! Mcsweeney’s Internet Tendency (mcsweeney’s.net) has a great rant from Aquaman’s p.o.v regarding the growing criticisms of his superheroness. It’s a bit old, google it and it still comes right up though.
‘fire-and-brimstone’ and ‘militant’ imply levels of aggression and violence neither PZ nor Dawkins is ever likely to live up to, as both have consistently ruled out physically violent demonstrations of any kind. By contrast, ‘fire-and-brimstone’ preachers threaten people with enternal torment, and at least some of them do advocate physical violence in their sermons. Likewise, ‘militant’ religious fanatics arm and train themselves in a military style.
A fundamental part of what drives this dispute is an overestimation of the levels of aggression certain people are expected deploy. Notice that when Dawkins in quoted, entire paragraphs of careful qualifiers, which narrow and direct the impact of his attacks, as well as altering their character, are causually discarded. ‘fire-and-brimstone’ and ‘militant’ strenghten these misunderstandings, and use of them may be unwise.
I’m reasonably certain Elizabeth Cady Stanton became an atheist, or at least an agnostic. Do you perhaps mean Susan B. Anthony?
the ability to effortlessly drive people insane.
Delirium of the Endless might claim precedence for this superpower… although she is more likely to make you see butterflies and pretty colors everywhere, instead of cephalopods and Nazis.
The ongoing New Atheism controversy is the turd in the punchbowl of what would have been the post-Dover science blogosphere mutual admiration fest. The Beyond Belief conference, Galactic Interactions’ ‘Shoot Me’ announcement, Framing, and the Suffragette flap showed that.
The world outside of ScienceBlogs doesn’t care about those things. But the New Atheist phenomenon is much larger than that, with all kinds of ramifications. In fact, I think it’s a bigger story than Dover.
No shit! Uh, wait…
No shit! Uh, wait…
No, he’s occasionally read and manipulated human minds. Probably his best-known psychic feat was in Grant Morrison’s JLA run, where he induced a seizure in a White Martian. Morrison explained that Aquaman can hack any part of your nervous system which was inherited from a marine ancestor. Because Morrison’s cool like that.
Well, he’s not Flash, but he’s much faster than a normal human (even by comics standards.) He can move considerable distances before humans can react, dodge and catch jet-propelled harpoons, outspeed other superguys who can bat bullets around, that sort of thing.
It just looks a lot less impressive when at least four other JLA regulars can break the sound barrier jogging backwards.
Um, lessee…shapeshift, manipulate water, heal people, read minds, amplify the force of his punches, cancel magical spells, foretell the future…anything the plot required, basically.
If you want details, there’s a thread here that shows various feats he’s pulled off throughout his post-Crisis career.
No, eventually all the Arthurian stuff petered out and for a while he hung around San Diego, which fell into the sea during an earthquake or something and became–wait for it–Sub Diego. Then, mercifully, the title was re-re-relaunched and now it’s about a new and younger Aquaman who’s basically a swashbuckling underwater fantasy hero. The older Aquaman grew tentacles, got amnesia, and became a mysterious prophet. It’s actually quite entertaining, mostly because Kurt Busiek was writing it up until a couple months ago.
I agree that he had a better concept during the hook-phase, though. Mostly because they were playing up the “King of the Seven Seas” angle, and ruling 3/4 of the surface area of the planet is genuinely impressive.
Stanton was described as an agnostic at her memorial, but in The Woman’s Bible at least she seems like a believing deist.
“The canon law, the Scriptures, the creeds and codes and church discipline of the leading religions bear the impress of fallible man, and not of our ideal great first cause, “the Spirit of all Good,” that set the universe of matter and mind in motion, and by immutable law holds the land, the sea, the planets, revolving round the great centre of light and heat, each in its own elliptic, with millions of stars in harmony all singing together, the glory of creation forever and ever.”
But I wouldn’t be surprised if she was in fact less of a believer than her public writings presented.
One Eyed Jack: Actually, if taken literally, that superpower of Inviso-boy isn’t so useless. I can see one circumstance in which it would be very handy – think security cameras.