Jack Chick & climate change

I mentioned Jack Chick in that last article, so I actually looked in on his site. He’s got a new tract! It’s on Global Warming! He doesn’t believe in it. Why? Because it snows sometime, and climate scientists include women and they all believe in pagan gods. Really! Would I lie to you?

You don’t have to worry about climate change, because Jesus is going to set you on fire and slaughter you with plagues. So there’s no problem.

How…reassuring.

Foolish Fulwiler fantasizes

Jennifer Fulwiler is a treasure. She’s a former atheist who doesn’t have a clue about atheism, a naive Catholic convert, and someone who pities us atheists because “we’re trapped in a prison of reason“. She never makes sense, so she never disappoints.

And now she’s done it again. Fulwiler is babbling about the Global Atheist Conference. She’s not making sense again.

She lists a number of ‘first impressions’.

Hemant Mehta ought to worry. She likes him a lot, and is mystified that he’s not going to be at the GAC.

Where’s Hemant Mehta? He must have been busy that weekend. The blogger/author is a major up-and-coming voice in the modern atheist movement. Given the perspective he’s gained from the discussion on his blog, I would think that he would add a lot of value to a conference like this.

Yes, I agree. But you know, there are a lot atheists out there, and we can’t all go to every conference. It’s just weird to pick out one random atheist among many and wonder why they aren’t at one particular conference among many. So? Would you like me to list a few dozen other prominent atheist speakers who weren’t invited or couldn’t make it?

Just look at these headshots! With that number of speakers you’d expect at least a couple unflattering, obviously-take-with-an-iPhone shots, but they’re all gorgeous. Lookin’ good, atheists.

That’s just weird. It’s like she’s baffled that we look human.

Since I’m sure he doesn’t want to say it himself, I’ll say it for him: PZ Myers should have gotten top billing in the ads, and it’s crazy that he wasn’t mentioned at all in the audio spots. When he saw that, he had to be all like, “Do millions of blog pageviews per month count for nothing?!”

Not for nothing, but why would anyone in their right mind think that’s the most important characteristic to promote? The audience either reads my blog and knows who I am and don’t need to advertise me, or they don’t read it and I’m effectively a nobody to them. I have a realistic perspective here; my number one job is as a teacher at UMM, and that’s generally not a huge selling point, sad to say. And Dawkins/Dennett/Harris are a much bigger draw, and to an Australian audience, the local atheist celebrities are going to be much more interesting.

And then Fulwiler gets “clever”, I think…at least clever for someone gullible enough to fall for Catholic bullshit, which isn’t very. Look at this clumsy setup:

I like the part about basing laws on rational thought and evidence. It echoes a sentiment that is a driving force in the atheist community right now, namely the idea that society must develop a set of moral values that is not rooted in any kind of supernatural belief system. I think it could end up being a really good thing that the leaders of modern atheism are coming together to discuss this, because this is an idea that needs a lot more exploration.

She doesn’t believe a word of this. I think it’s quite right that not only do we need to develop a fully secular morality, but that it’s the only kind of morality there is, because her supernatural tyrant doesn’t exist. Catholic morality is not built on the supernatural, but on lies and fear, tools of priests for all time, and a secular morality is built on truth, as near as we can get to it.

How do I know Fulwiler doesn’t believe this? Because she next brings out a great big strawman on strings and dances it around on the stage of the convention.

I imagine that one day someone will get on the stage at one of these conferences, and propose a new moral code in which the the strong exterminate the weak and take all their possessions for themselves, thus ushering in a glorious age where only the most superior genes remain in the gene pool. Everyone in the crowd will gasp and fidget uncomfortably…and then realize that they cannot argue against it without stepping outside of their own atheist-materialist worldview. They’ll find themselves tempted to appeal to the transcendent to make their case, wanting to have blind faith in the fact that love should be prized above all else, believing that self-sacrifice is always better than selfishness, regardless of what the latest scientific studies say.

Riiiight. You all know what would happen if a speaker started promoting a totalitarian tyranny and demanding that we start persecuting the “weak” — they would be ripped apart rhetorically. These are the kinds of arguments that are advanced for a theocratic monarchy, you know, and we’re entirely familiar with them. At the GAC, Sam Harris would rise up and argue for an egalitarian morality without bringing in anything transcendent. Richard Dawkins would dismantle that ridiculous argument for social Darwinism with ease, and it wouldn’t be by claiming that self-sacrifice always trumps altruism.

Morality is an attribute that is only relevant in interactions between individuals. A group of interacting individuals is a community. Morality is defined within that community; the desires of a hypothetical invisible entity have no relevance to the rules that regulate that community…except when parasitic individuals use the carrot and stick of supernatural rewards and punishments to mislead the members of that group.

Fulwiler has written a bizarre fantasy that is exceeded in crudity by Chick tracts like Big Daddy. Sure, imagine some absurd caricature of an atheist getting trounced by some clever religious person — but it simply doesn’t have any relationship to reality.

Speaking of fantasy, here’s how she imagines an atheist convention ending…with all the atheists flocking to the church afterwards.

I hope that these events really will provide a forum for questioning assumptions and asking tough questions as much as they claim they will. Because when they do, the nearby churches will be flooded with post-convention crowds.

I don’t think so. Dream on, deluded lady.

Oh, if you all want a real treat, read the comments on that article. I think Fulwiler might just be the intellectual among the Catholic community that reads her drivel.

Whoa! Catholic women are much prettier than atheist women. I feel bad for all the atheist men. =(

I feel unclean now.

Carrier cold-cocks Ehrman

This is great: Richard Carrier Blogs totally destroys Bart Ehrman’s argument for the reality of a historical Jesus.

Jesus is a legend, like King Arthur or Robin Hood or Paul Bunyan. There may have been some individual in the past who inspired the stories, but he’s not part of the historical record, and the tall tales built around him almost certainly bear little resemblance to the long-lost reality. It’s simply bad history to invent rationalizations for an undocumented mystery figure from the distant past.

Manology 101

There I was, minding my own business, when out of the blue some random guy going by the name “principles101” tweets at me…

@pzmyers time for some real biology lessons: goo.gl/obiC

Oh hellz yeah, I think, I love me some biology lessons. So I follow the link, and it’s a free textbook, it says. Only it’s at some site called Manhood Academy, with cheesy clashy glarey page design, and … you can guess where this is going. Sure, it’s a free “book” that you can download, but there isn’t a speck of biology in it. It cockily calls itself “The Principles of Social Competence“, but it isn’t even that — it’s a ridiculous fantasy novel, 292 pages long, in which the authors stroke themselves by inventing elaborate dialogs and scenarios in which the manly men they are instructing all emerge victorious, with gorgeous cowed women clinging tremblingly to their burly powerful arms.

Mostly this is accomplished by pretending that women are like puppy dogs, and it is the man’s job to train her. For instance, if you encounter a girl who doesn’t know how to take a compliment, there’s a little script for what you should say:

“No that’s the wrong answer. You don’t just say, ‘Hah, right.’ That’s a total turn off. You need to learn how to show some appreciation. When I tell you that I like the way you smile, that it turns me on, you should say, ‘Oh my god! That’s soooooo sweet of you!!!! Thank you!!!!.’ See, just like that. That’s the right way to do it.”

You know, if I tried that on a real woman, rather than the Barbie doll the author is posing in his mind, she would either be rightfully creeped out and run away, or she’d focus her withering scorn on my assumption that her purpose in life is to “turn me on”.

Apparently, though, I just have to be persistent.

By consistently punishing a woman’s dysfunctional behavior, she will eventually submit to your will. This means she now fears your authority and values your expectations.

Once a woman submits to your authority, you need to reward her with your praise and affection to maintain her submission.

Give her a biscuit, too, and if she forgets her training, slap her on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.

There’s the usual caricature of feminism — “At its heart, feminism represents women’s desire to control men” — lots of long-winded pop pseudopsychology, all larded up with so much random clip art that it will make your eyes ache. Oh, and please do read the section beginning at page 238: “How to handle bitch behavior”. Apparently, the best way to handle a woman is to just call her a “bitch” over and over again until she cries and succumbs to your irresistible manhood. Then you can call her a “cunt” to make her beg for your lovin’.

It’s an eye-opener. There are actually men in existence who are that stupid that they believe that BS. Look and laugh: if you’ve ever been curious about what exactly is so unbelievably inane about MRAs and PUAs, it’s a useful example.

Biblical morality, again

I think we’re getting to Ken Ham. There’s that twitchy eye, the jittery shifting of his feet, the rising blood pressure, the purplish skin tone…and the fact that he’s writing threats like this:

In recent times, various atheists have been blasting AiG (and myself) on the internet and in books for reaching children with the message of the truth of God’s Word beginning in Genesis through speaking programs and books and DVD’s etc. In fact, as I have documented, they accuse us of ‘child abuse’ because we teach children they are created and that God’s Word is true. You see, they want to reach children with their message–that there is no God–that life is meaningless and purposeless–that the universe and all life is the result of totally naturalistic processes. They want to brainwash children with their anti-God religion of millions of years and evolution.

I’m reminded of a verse of Scripture: “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.”

(Mark 9:42)

Man, that Bible of his has a solution for everything: pray a lot, slaughter a few goats or children, curse people, stone sluts to death, and throw atheists into the ocean with a rock tied around their neck.

It’s a wonder he doesn’t understand why we think his brand of dogma is toxic to children — because he staggers about, poisoned to the gills, acting as such an excellent bad example.

The beginning of the collapse of Catholic morality!

Hooray! You promise? Can I help?

The ever-demented Michael Voris, Real Catholic™ has a new video out in which he identifies unambiguously the first domino that will cause the collapse of Catholic morality: masturbation.

He does look like a world-class expert in wanking, and he must enjoy the subject since he promises to talk about it for hours, but I think that rather than just babbling about it, action is more important. I want you all to make some time this week to “destroy Catholicism”, my new favorite euphemism for jacking/jilling off.

You know, suddenly Bill Donohue’s mad rantings sound extremely filthy.

Norwegian tail poll

A Norwegian airline paints the tails of its planes with a portrait of Norwegian heroes (“tail heroes” or Halehelter) — which seems like a very nice idea to me. One catch: they determine who to paint on the tail with an online poll. Unfortunate consequence: Norwegian Christians (they exist? Wow!) have leapt into the fray and have been upvoting Verdensevangelist and misjonær — evangelicals and missionaries — instead of scientists and engineers and explorers and similar good things. Who wants to fly in a plane cursed with a portrait of a born again Christian fanatic or Baptist missionary? Ick.

Aim higher. A Norwegian reader sent in some recommendations for better choices. There are four cities, Stavanger, Oslo, Bergen, and Trondheim, each of which has a different list of candidates.

Stavanger: Peter Waage, chemist.

Oslo: Wilhelm Bjerknes (or “Christian Bjerknes”), meteorolgist

Bergen: Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen, Leprosy research.

Trondheim: Fredrikke Marie Qvam, suffragist.

To vote, go to http://www.halehelter.no, select a city (top right), press the big red blob “Stem på en kandidat”, find your candidate from the list (or search by name), press the heart on the right to vote. Each internet visitor can vote once a day.

The lists are sorted by rank. Let’s see if we can push these choices to the top!

Why I am an atheist – Stella

Few scraps of useful genealogical information have been salvaged by my family members, but here’s one: a branch of the ancestors were Huguenots, who fled Europe to come to the colonies because of the Inquisition.

I had to do my own research to find the connection to the Spanish Inquisition, which turns out to have had a bloody beginning in the south of France. It was, if anything, even more ferocious there, as the link between politics and religion manifested itself in first the acceptance and then the kingly condemnation of those upstart protestants.

Once the monarchy ran out of money, they also ran out of tolerance as the popes, wealthy beyond kings with income from parishioner tithes and selling indulgences, bargained for political support in return for their money and well-fed armed forces. French rulers gave them a free hand and the torture began.

So the screams from the dungeons persuaded my forbears, and others of the skilled, learned, critically-thinking class that composed the Christian Protestants, to skedaddle off to other parts, finally including England and then the western hemisphere. You can read about it in history – the exodus of the skilled class jump-started Britain’s industrial revolution.

Skip forward a few generations to my mother, a lovely girl with a nervous disposition. That’s what they called it before her volatile moods were diagnosed as bipolar syndrome, with a touch of Borderline Personality Disorder, that catchall for a condition that would have gotten her burned at the stake in Salem, with the hearty approval of everyone, even the non-superstitious-witch-hunting faction.

And when she was cycling through a really crazy spell, she’d occasionally cite some disjointed religious reference as the reason her mania was justified. She’d carry an old bible around, with little notes stuck inside and passages underlined. She got messages nobody else heard, and some were in that book, though for all the relevance to reality it could have been Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy or the Book of Mormon, or any other work of imaginative fiction.

A few weeks before a major breakdown and resulting adventures that make good storytelling now but occasioned plenty of heartbreak and worry then, she came up to me and with the intensity of the manic phase, told me how she got a message from God in a tuna fish sandwich.

“I was eating it and suddenly I had to spit out the next bite – it was so salty, it was horrible! It was awful, like there was a cup of salt in that sandwich, and then I realized it was the tears of Jesus, shed for us!” She had no further insight into penance or salvation, and never spent a moment in prayer or reflection. Religion was just one more symptom of her intense lifelong mental illness, which would have been enough to make me a critical thinker even if it offered the faintest shred of aid or comfort, which it has never provided.

I guess the lesson for my family is: if someone shows up with a Good Book, run for your life!

Stella