I confess, I’m not a fan — I consider him among the worst of the big name science popularizers, and every time I listen to him I’m either more confused or irritated. I also find his forays into biology generally ignorant and wrong, and he seems to be most popular among lay people who consider him an apologist for god. For example, here’s this wanker who claims Kaku has found definitive proof that god exists.

The theoretical physicist Michio Kaku claims to have developed a theory that might point to the existence of God. The information has created a great stir in the scientific community because Kaku is considered one of the most important scientists of our times, one of the creators and developers of the revolutionary String Theory which is highly respected throughout the world.

To to come to his conclusions, the physicist made ​​use of what he calls “primitive semi – radius tachyons “.

Tachyons are theoretical particles capable to “unstick ” the Universe matter or vacuum space between matter particles, leaving everything free from the influences of the surrounding universe.

After conducting the tests, Kaku came to the conclusion that we live in a “Matrix”.

They include this video of Kaku in which, I note, he does not provide proof of god, does not claim to have a proof, and most of that garbled stuff above doesn’t appear (although, as quoted here, he does make claims of concluding that the universe was created by an intelligence). Instead, this video is mostly about the interplay between physics and mathematics.

It does conclude with some gibberish.

But you see, all this is pure mathematics and so the final resolution could be that God is a mathematician. And when you read the mind of God, we actually have a candidate for the mind of God. The mind of God we believe is cosmic music, the music of strings resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace. That is the mind of God.

I think he’s transcended pure mathematics to reach a plane of pure bullshit.

But Kaku seems to be ubiquitous, despite shoveling a heck of a lot of noise, and the happy Christian quoting him claims he’s one of the most important scientists of our times. I don’t get it. I see someone who is more Deepak Chopra than Stephen Hawking. But I could be wrong — anyone care to enlighten me on the source of this guy’s popular authority?

As expected, Thunderf00t has a new video crowing about the failure of the Reason Rally. But I’ve been reading the stuff put out by people who attended.

Trav Mamone thought it was great.

Matt Facciani had a grand time.

Adam Lee got a charge out of it.

Some guy named Ed Brayton made a series of videos about it.

I’m beginning to wish I’d gone — everyone is making the point that the reason for the Reason Rally was more than just making a big mob scene, but getting together as a community for a day. That sounds like a success to me.

As for the haters, Adam Lee has a smart comment on that.

The usual sneering bigots asserted that the rally’s anti-harassment policy must have kept people away, a claim with the same plausibility as a Bible-thumper blaming gay rights for earthquakes.

Since we’ve got one of those keep your social justice outta my atheism types babbling in the comments here, I thought I’d point out that Deacon Duncan has a good response to those kinds of conservatives.

We atheists are supposed to stay focused, stay on message, but the only message they’ll tolerate is that god doesn’t exist and religion is bad, with no thought about why or the implications. It makes for a rather boring and repetitive message, and lacking in introspection.

How strange…I’m hearing from so many people ranting and raving about how the Reason Rally was a failure, but they’re all people who weren’t there; at the same time, I’m seeing a lot of enthusiastic appreciation from attendees. This wouldn’t be at all odd if it were Christians and Fox News trying to dismiss it, but there’s also a cadre of the usual dedicated anti-SJW atheists also triumphantly declaring the defeat of the Reason Rally.

Here’s the deal: it was a mixed success. It sounds like it was a good event, and the people who went there got what they wanted out of it, but it also had lower attendance than had been hoped for. The accounts I’m seeing suggest that it fell somewhat short of the attendance at the first one, although it was still a healthy turnout.

So what reduced the number of attendees?

Obviously, it’s because I wasn’t invited to speak at this one.

Wait, no, that’s not it. With such a mob of speakers, I’ll be the first to admit I’d be a fairly low-wattage draw.

I’m going to pin the problems on organization and focus. Personally, I didn’t go because the early organization was very frankly a mess — way back in January I was complaining about the slow start and the small number of speakers at that time…and if you’re trying to get large numbers of people to commit to the expense and time of travel, you’ve got to get them enthused early. I just couldn’t. And by the time they got their act together, it was too late for me to make arrangements.

This is fixable. Next time, get a solid core of speakers committed well in advance. Don’t dribble out announcements slowly, over months.

The other problem is focus. This is an atheist event, but a lot of the noise being made ahead of time was about Big Name Celebrities agreeing to speak there, like Johnny Depp and Margaret Cho. That’s nice for getting a blurb in the newspaper, but they have no reputation as atheists, and haven’t spoken much about godlessness, so they were no draw at all to me (although I might have been pleasantly surprised by their talks, if they hadn’t cancelled, which is a whole ‘nother problem). It needed atheists qua atheists, not random celebrities who happen to not believe in gods. If I want to listen to someone talk about atheism, Greta Christina is more of a celebrity than Johnny Depp.

This is also fixable. Start with a solid roster of known atheist speakers first, sign ’em up early (they’re easy, they’ll be enthusiastic for the cause), and then try and get those popular but largely irrelevant celebrities.

So sorry, naysayers. It wasn’t a failure, but there’s room for improvement.