Only a decade behind us

A bit over ten years ago, a bunch of us faced a dilemma: National Geographic had taken over hosting of our blogs, and they were sending not-at-all subtle signs that they did not like people who criticized religion, and they were going to start imposing new restrictions on what we could write. That’s why you’re reading this on freethoughtblogs.com — Ed Brayton and I decided to set up this independent site and move our blogs here, and host other godless bloggers. Others, like David Gorski, just set up their own independent blogs. A few were seduced away by the giant group blog, Patheos, who swore on a stack of Bibles that, while they were primarily a religious site, they’d allow atheists to have their own subdomain, with no severe restrictions on their content. They also had money and could provide a reasonable revenue to their bloggers.

I was never invited to join Patheos (I guess I was too atheist for them) and wouldn’t have been at all tempted to go under the wing of such a site — I wouldn’t like the company I’d have to keep, and I didn’t trust them at all. I’m not surprised at all that now, after a decade of tolerance, Patheos management has decided to change the rules on everyone.

Efforts to reach Patheos’ management team were unsuccessful, but the departing bloggers and their channel manager, Dale McGowan, said that about a year ago, Patheos decided to change its editorial direction. Bloggers were advised they could stay at Patheos so long as they stopped writing negative or critical posts on religion or politics and instead focused on how to live a good life within their own worldview.

All my suspicions are confirmed, and the temptation is great to say, “I told you so!”. We were snookered too, though — for many years we hired Patheos to provide our ad services here. You don’t see any ads now, do you? That’s because their ads were so obnoxious and intrusive that we finally canceled them altogether. So the bloggers that are now departing en masse have my sympathy, and I wish them the best of luck at their new site, OnlySky.

Well, except maybe Heman Mehta, who has been sticking his foot in his mouth for a while.

There aren’t any media outlets that cater specifically to atheists,” he said. “All the other atheist specific blogging networks are run by volunteers and people who are passionate about the subject but don’t do business-savvy anything, so they falter and die. This one has digital expertise.

Oh, really? No other atheist media outlets? Freethoughtblogs is a media outlet, it’s also explicitly atheist/humanist. What about The Orbit?

We are “volunteers and people who are passionate about the subject”, but I’ve never considered that a negative.

We “don’t do business-savvy anything”, because we’ve worked on being independent of any capitalist control, whether it’s NatGeo or Patheos ad services. I presume OnlySky has learned the same lesson we accepted years ago.

What’s this about “falter and die”? We’ve been doing well for over ten years, and even weathered a $2 million lawsuit, with the assistance of our most excellent readership. It’s rather foolish to declare that all other atheists networks have died off, when a) we’re standing right here as a refutation, and b) you’re about to start a new atheist network in what you’ve declared to be such a hazardous and infertile field. We aren’t going to disappear just because Hemant Mehta doesn’t think we exist.

Good fortune, OnlySky, but I hope Mehta isn’t your spokesperson in the future.

Maybe reserve your hope that anyone “falters and dies” for Patheos.

The Kent Hovind Challenge!

I got tired of Kent Hovind constantly demanding that I, and other people, debate him, so I offer an alternative.

If you don’t want to listen to the whole thing, you can get the gist from the title screen: I tell him to go read a book. Or you can read the script, down below.

Dang, he beat me to it. Hovind issued his own challenge this morning: it’s to have a debate, with idiotic creationist YouTuber Standing For Truth as the moderator. In other words, the same as he always does.

Forget it, my challenge is better.

[Read more…]

Hello, your name is Kent Hovind, prepare to be laughed at

Kent is back, begging for attention. Here are a couple of comments he left on my YouTube channel. I’ll respond to them here and be done with him.

Of course you don’t recall, Kent — but I’ve got the receipts. Also, it’s Coyne, not Coyan, so I think it’s safe to assume you haven’t already read Why Evolution is True, which doesn’t surprise me at all. You don’t read anything about the science you disparage, let alone even popular summaries. You’re a know-nothing.

Why should I “debate”? I can talk about evolution and science without asking you to jump in and provide commentary from an ignorant point of view. You’re adding nothing to the discussion.

I accepted an invitation to debate in my callow, foolish youth five or six years ago, when you were getting out of prison for tax dodging. You didn’t accept my insistence that you couldn’t profit one-sidedly from it, and it was you that refused.

Again, you can’t respond in a debate on evolution. I’ve seen you at work. You’ve got nothing to offer other than mischaracterization (“you believe you evolved from a rock”, for instance), incredulity (“how can you believe you’re related to a mosquito?”…because the molecular evidence shows that we are, I’d say), and ignorance and stupidity. You have nothing to add. Nothing.

Fuck off, you vapid, clownshoe-wearing racist, misogynist, criminal fraud.

Hey, Kent, crazy idea here: you don’t need me, either. Go read Why Evolution is True all by yourself, and go through it, all by yourself, chapter by chapter, making video rebuttals. You know, kinda like how Aron Ra went through your videos chopping ’em up. Do it!

Also, Jesus is imaginary and there is no afterlife

Since I’m not celebrating anything, and am lacking in family obligations, and don’t have to cook dinner, I was at a loss for things to do…so I got my genetics syllabus done, put together a quiz, reviewed the material for the first lab, and prepped my first lecture. I am such a good boy! It’s going to be especially galling now when Santa leaves me nothing at all this year.

If the virus doesn’t get you, the cultists will

Isn’t it odd how people will refuse to get vaccinated, because they “don’t know what’s in it” (while in reality, the contents of a vaccine are precisely specified and measured down to the last nanogram), but then they’ll turn around and slurp up toxic goo mixed up in a church basement by a kook?

The family of a Dallas’ QAnon cult member is sounding the alarm.

Multiple members of the Leek family confirmed that their relative, who left her husband and children behind in Delaware to follow a fringe QAnon cult leader to Dallas last month, has been drinking a chemical cocktail containing chlorine dioxide, an industrial disinfectant, among other substances.

Their relative has been drinking this cocktail alongside her fellow cult members and has been the one to mix it up and distribute it amongst the group as well, says family, who have declined to reveal the name of their relative in the group.

“She was proud to tell us that she was the one mixing it up and giving it to everybody,” a family member said.

The cult leader in this case is the same guy who prophesied that assassinated president John F. Kennedy was going to appear in downtown Dallas and make Trump president again. I guess if you believe that, you’re also ready to drink poison from the same guy.

Gay cartoon ducks killed David Menton

Ken Ham is very concerned about sin, and cartoon ducks, and the curse of homosexuality — more than he is concerned about the pandemic, apparently. Pink News wrote about his fury over gay ducks appearing in the cartoon Duck Tales, prompting him to condemn gay reporters for not being more concerned about sin than COVID-19.

In a new Facebook post, Ham said: “A gay news source wrote an article about me with this headline: ‘Thousands of people are dying from coronavirus every day, but this Christian fundamentalist is raging over two gay cartoon ducks.’”

He suggested that he would have preferred the headline to be “150,000 people die each day in the world, and Ken Ham is concerned for their spiritual state and their eternity because of the raging pandemic of sin”, but added, while knowing nothing about the journalist’s religious beliefs, that they would not understand because “God of this world has blinded the eyes of those who don’t believe”.

He then, bizarrely, went on to speculate about the journalist’s death and whether they even cared about people dying from COVID-19.

Ken Ham wrote: Yes, the worst pandemic of all – sin – is raging about us and the death toll is 100 per cent. I predict the writer of the article about me will one day die.

From a perspective of a non-Christian, why do they care if people die?… If you die and that’s it and you won’t know you ever existed, why do they care about people dying?

It’s true: Ken Ham doesn’t care much about the pandemic. From Dan Phelps: “From early in the pandemic the Ark Encounter amusement park only “suggested” the use of masks and complained bitterly about closures and Kentucky mask mandates. YouTube videos by Ark visitors indicate mask wearing is practiced by a small fraction of visitors.” So yes, he is not at all inconsistent here — he really does believe that sin is a greater worry than dying of COVID-19. He has even claimed that viruses are a good thing for humanity.

Evolution, on the other hand, says that death has always been a part of nature. This view, found nowhere in the Bible, was actually embraced in a recent article by the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today. His belief in evolution led him to declare that it is a biological reality that “bacteria and viruses are not bitter fruits of the fall, but among the first fruits of good creation itself.” But this idea makes God the author of bad things.

Even in a fallen world, God remains omnipotent and perfectly capable of sustaining and protecting His fallen creation. But when Adam sinned, the world was cursed. Suffering and death entered into His creation. The whole universe now suffers from the effects of sin.

In the biblical worldview, viruses had an originally good purpose in creation. In fact, many viruses today are being investigated for their positive benefits, including possible symbiotic relationships and the regulating of populations of bacteria in our gut. Viruses are also used for gene therapy. Such modern-day research offers us a glimpse into the original created purpose for viruses.

Cool cool cool. So what sin was David Menton guilty of, and what virtue has he acquired?

If you don’t recall, David Menton was one of Ken Ham’s pseudoscientific minions — I’ve mentioned him a few times. He’s a guy who got a Ph.D. in biology, and used it to lie for Jesus. Ken Ham has now announced that David Menton died “after a brief illness”. He doesn’t say what that illness was, but the newspaper obituary does.

Dr. David Norman Menton, 83, of Petersburg, KY passed away from Covid Saturday, December 11, 2021 in Edgewood, KY.

Hmmm. Maybe if Ham had been a bit more diligent and rational in policing all those people strolling around his “museum” and Ark Park, his great friend would still be alive today.

Sorry, fam, count me out

Chris Cuomo has been suspended from his job at CNN as his efforts to support his brother, Andrew, with the influence of his media position, have been gradually exposed. Wait a minute, CNN didn’t think his bias was obvious from day one? And what’s with this “suspension” rather than just simply firing him?

CNN has suspended Chris Cuomo, one of its biggest stars, a day after the release of documents that detailed his efforts to help his brother, then-New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, fend off allegations of sexual misconduct.

Transcripts from the New York Attorney General’s office on Monday showed that the cable host was far more involved in the governor’s crisis-management efforts than the younger Cuomo had previously acknowledged.

The network and its president, Jeff Zucker, had previously backed Cuomo for months, even as details accumulated about his role advising his brother, who eventually resigned in the wake of the sexual harassment allegations.

What I’ve found more interesting than Cuomo family corruption, though, is all the people sympathizing with Chris Cuomo and saying they’d have done the same thing. It’s rather revealing.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1465844125752864770

(This tweet has since been deleted by Yglesias — I guess he noticed how bad it looked.)

Huh. I wouldn’t. Sorry, Jim and Mike, I love you like, ummm, brothers, but if you do something criminal or unethical — if you start sexually harassing young women, or robbing banks, or avoiding taxes, or telling people they should take Ivermectin for that case of COVID, or you start leaving thumbs-up on Joe Rogan videos — I’m not ever doing anything unethical to protect you. If you need money to hire a good lawyer, I’ll do what I can. I’m willing to be a character witness during the sentencing hearing. I’ll send you boxes of cookies in prison. I’ll be there for you when you get out, and help you get back on your feet and live an ethical life.

Mainly, though, I’m pretty sure you’re good people who wouldn’t do anything like that, and definitely wouldn’t expect me to do “unethical shit” to help you out. Likewise, I don’t expect you to lie about me if I were to explode in rage and punch a Republican in the nose. It’s OK, you can say I was wrong to do that.

True confession: my family has been there. We had a sweet little sister, cute as a button, a real charmer, who fell into a bad crowd, was addicted to drugs, and that addiction led to unforgivable behavior, like stealing from my parents. She spent time in jail, she ended up living on the street, and getting hooked on — yikes — evangelical Christianity (which didn’t help her at all). She eventually died of an untreated systemic infection, and we wept for her. We all loved our sister and wanted to help her, but we did not excuse her or worse, assist her in the reprehensible behavior the addiction drove her to.

That’s a difference that stays with me, that while their hearts were breaking my parents would not stoop to “unethical shit” themselves. I’m not going to, either. What’s wrong with these people who say they would?

By the way, I was shaped by growing up in a family with little interest in religion, and I think I grew a moral compass by following the examples my parents set. I sometimes wonder if my baby sister might have been saved, though, if she’d been brought up in a more rigidly authoritarian house — what was good for me might not have been good for her. Or maybe it was that her oldest brother abandoned her when he was 18 and she was 7 to flit off to college. What-might-have-been is a terrible game to play.

Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

We’ve heard about hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and betadine, and who knows what else, but now we hit a new low (don’t worry, the bottom keeps receding and they’ll find something else). Another approach to battling COVID-19 is to eat…poop. Cow poop.

A video of a Dr. Manoj Mittal from Haryana, India, has been making the social media rounds. This video showed him walking among cows and then poop there is. He picked up from the ground what appeared to be a handful cow dung. He then selected a piece, put it into his mouth, and began chewing. Here’s a tweet with the video:

Yum!

This is associated with Hindu religious beliefs, so it probably won’t be popular here in the US. I hope.

The letter described how “the Hindu religious system places great value on the products of cows. They believe that the byproducts of cows such as dung, ghee, milk, curd, and urine are purifying agents.” They wrote how “many people are consuming cow dung and urine under branded ‘cow dung therapy’ for Covid cure.” The letter continued by saying, “Some members of the Hindu nationalist party demanded that cow urine and dung can prevent and cure Covid-19. Therefore, the Indian superstitious, fanatic politicians and some other leaders disseminating the propagation that cow dung can cure Covid-19 among the general religious population.” This is all despite the lack of real scientific evidence supporting the use of either cow dung or cow urine against Covid-19.

Christians, at least, don’t believe any of that. They think they can cure everything with prayer, which would actually taste like shit in my mouth, so I’ll duck out of that delusion, too.

A jailbird and spouse abuser claims to have debated me — you’d think I’d have noticed

Shock. Horror. Gasp. Kent Hovind tells a lie about me.

By the way, I agree that I look pretty shabby today. I dyed my beard a month ago, and of course it’s coming in gray again, and I don’t feel like dying it again. I’m also shellacked by the booster shot I got on Thursday…getting better, but still horribly achey. I’ve also been wearing a stupid boot to recover from tendinitis, and yeah, I’m tired. You are allowed to call me old and ugly. But at least I’m not a lying moron like Kent.

I had to get this video out fast

I have opinions on this silly University of Austin/UATX nonsense, but I fear the nascent institution is about to become an ex-institution, because its official supporters are rushing to distance themselves from it all. So, before my words become totally obsolete, I put up a video stating my piece.

A year from now, this is going to be a curious artifact of yet another goofy right-wing reach for the straws, and people won’t even remember what UATX was.

Transcript below the fold.

[Read more…]