Well, this just made my morning: Nathan Robinson shreds the most annoying man in the world, Steven Pinker. I thought I’d pull out one brief quote to illustrate, but it was nearly impossible — I just wanted to pull out the entire dang thing and frame it and hang it on my wall.

But OK, one tiny bit:

I do not mean to dwell too much on the tone of Pinker’s writing, but it’s important to see how dishonest centrist critics of social justice rhetoric can be. Pinker treats the left as hysterically overstating its case, of calling everybody racists and despoilers, even as he brands them Nazis and Stalinists. One of the common themes I see in critics of social justice politics is engaging in the very thing they’re accusing the left of doing. There are countless examples of this in Pinker’s work. For example, in The Blank Slate, which is strongly critical of mainstream feminism, he cites Gloria Steinem saying: “What you need is people who see through literature like Andrea Dworkin, who see through law like me, to see through art and create the uncompromised woman’s visual vocabulary.” Pinker concludes from this quote that Steinem is “oblivious to the danger inherent in a few intellectuals’ arrogating the role of deciding which art and literature the rest of society will enjoy.” This is an incredibly audacious remark for a book with entire sections on which art is the Good Art and which art is “ugly, baffling, and insulting art”:

“In this chapter I will diagnose the malaise of the arts and humanities and offer some suggestions for revitalizing them… Once we recognize what modernism and postmodernism have done to the elite arts and humanities, the reasons for their decline and fall become all too obvious.”

When you say it, it’s dangerous elitism. When I say it, it’s Science!

The Blank Slate was the book that ended my interest in paying attention to what Pinker was saying. Even the title was a gigantic straw man, and the internal contradictions were overwhelming. Robinson goes on to point out something I’ve seen repeatedly in the atheist community:

Hypocrisy doesn’t make the underlying arguments untrue, but I think it’s critical to explaining why the left can end up with an unwarranted reputation for being unreasonable and emotional: Our critics operate just as much from “feeling” and instinct, but insist that they’re just being Objective. My colleague Aisling McCrea has written about how mere invocation of the word “logic” is used as proof that one is being logical. “Reason” becomes a brand rather than a description of an actual process by which the other side’s arguments are carefully analyzed and responded to fairly. (I’ve shown how both Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro mangle basic reasoning.)

The path to popularity always seems to be tag your identity with a lot of buzzwords, even if you don’t actually implement them. It was a gigantic tactical error on my part not to call this site “The Amazing Logical Reasonable Rational Skeptical Atheist White Man” instead of boring ol’ “Pharyngula”. I’d be rich and popular today! There sure are a lot of successful atheists who parade their virtuous identity politics in the name of their channel.

At least Pinker doesn’t do that. He doesn’t have to — his name has become synonymous with Calmly Misleading Apologist for the Status Quo.

Go read it. It’s a work of art.

Remember, Sam Harris is the atheist leader who once, when asked where all the women were at in atheism, explained it away by saying atheism lacked that “estrogen vibe” instead of noting all the women who have been leaders and who were currently hard-working activists.

I think it may have to do with my person slant as an author, being very critical of bad ideas. This can sound very angry to people..People just don’t like to have their ideas criticized. There’s something about that critical posture that is to some degree instrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women. The atheist variable just has this – it doesn’t obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men.

He has a great big blind spot for anyone who isn’t a rich white man. So when he says bullshit like this:

A paradox for our time: The far Left is disproportionately white, wealthy, and well-educated. So extreme “wokeness” is now one of the most glaring symptoms of “white privilege.”

— Sam Harris (@SamHarrisOrg) May 19, 2019

A paradox for our time: The far Left is disproportionately white, wealthy, and well-educated. So extreme “wokeness” is now one of the most glaring symptoms of “white privilege.”

He’s just doing it again. It’s because all the black men and women, and Hispanic men and women, and LGBT people who have been fighting for the Left all this time are invisible to him. That far Left is awesomely diverse, while his “Intellectual Dark Web” and the alt-right are a mess of mediocre white people suckling at the teats of conservative think tanks and promoting the status quo that maintains their privilege.

But this is typical of the tin-eared pronouncements from Harris, probably the most clueless of the “Four Horsemen”, and the one who is still regarded as the premier figurehead of alt-atheism. If only this was a position he could be fired from, but he’s still propped up by a horde of white male cultists.

If only philosophical SWAT teams existed…although the members would probably spend more time arguing with each other than battling those prominent boobs with bad philosophical imaginations.

The commentary is good, too.

There are a large number of people who spend a good majority of their time and energy worrying about something called “postmodern neo-marxists”, while rather amazingly, not being able to name a single one, or describe what they believe. Apparently though, these mysterious postmodernists think that “everything is as true as everything else” (a position that no one has ever held), and are engaged in some kind of systematic plot to destroy Western Civilization, by using…linguistic relativism, or something? It’s kind of hard to say.

I don’t know about you, but my plots are all more chaotic than systematic.

I have, all the time. I remember when atheism was about idealism and anger at ignorant tribalism and superstition. Then I remember that the atheist movement imploded because it filled up with libertarians, misogynists, islamophobes, homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes, war mongers, racists, apologists for Nazis, and generic cowards who refused to think that secularists had any duty other than denying the existence of gods, and realize that atheism would have been just as criminal as the benighted belief systems we wanted to replace.

No, you don’t want to talk to me today. The only person I want to have a conversation with is me from 20 years ago, so I can rip all of the hope out of his skull.

Their doctors are going to be so surprised!

From a #QAnon group on Facebook.

It might not be the most serious or rigorous movement in history, you know? pic.twitter.com/bEWs7ffxkl

— Colin (@Kolyin) May 13, 2019

Sam Harris has a long interview with Kara Swisher (1’40”! transcript here), which even in written form puts me to sleep. Fortunately, Paul Campos has extracted some of the more bizarre, Sam-defining bits for me, and gets right to the problem of the Intellectual Dark Web. They pooh-pooh the harm and danger of white nationalism and racism and general bigotry, trivializing it and suggesting that it’s not important, which allows them to fan the flames of racial bias while neatly divorcing themselves from its outcomes. What stuns me is his argument for doing this: white nationalism is an ideology, but it’s not a religion, therefore it’s not as bad?

The difference I would draw between Christchurch, a white supremacist atrocity, and what just happened in Sri Lanka or any jihadist attack you could name, the difference there is that white supremacy is an ideology, I’ll grant you. It doesn’t link up with so many good things in a person’s life that it is attracting psychologically normal non-beleaguered people into its fold. It may become that on some level.

It doesn’t have all the elements of a true religion. I mean, there are ways in which it’s entangled with certain forms of Christianity. Again, there’s not a death cult of martyrdom forming there. It’s conceivable that one could form there. I’m not ruling out the white supremacists for causing a lot of havoc in the world. But in reality, white supremacy, and certainly murderous white supremacy, is the fringe of the fringe in our society and any society. And if you’re gonna link it up with Christianity, it is the fringe of the fringe of Christianity. If you’re gonna debate a fundamentalist Christian, as I occasionally do, if I were to say, “Yeah, but what about white supremacy and all the …” He’s not gonna know what you’re … It’s not part of their doctrine in a meaningful way.

Where I come from, a bad idea is a bad idea, and we don’t excuse it if it avoids being entangled with a religion. I’m comfortable with saying religion is a bad idea, but it is only one member of a much larger class of bad ideas, especially problematic when you’re trying to give a special status to a category as broadly diverse and amorphous as religion.

What’s particularly obnoxious about this twisty exercise in special pleading is that it is so transparent in what he’s trying to do: he is once again straining to make the case that Islam is uniquely evil. That only Islam is a “death cult of martyrdom”, that any instances of Christianity inspiring mass murder are weird outliers that can be ignored, while any instances of Muslims committing mass murder are truly representative of the faith. If I had to argue against such a ludicrous claim, I’d take a twofold approach.

First, if you’re gonna debate a fundamentalist Muslim, and you were to say, “Yeah, but what about suicide bombers and all…”, that Muslim is likely to be annoyed that you’ve brought up an insulting stereotype and is going to tell you that murder is not part of their doctrine in any meaningful way, and that terrorism is the fringe of the fringe of Islam. They might also point out that Harris seems to be deeply ignorant about the religion (I’ve seen him handwave away the assessments of Arabic speakers and researchers in the field of Middle Eastern culture), and that his popularity is entirely a consequence of his appeal to equally ignorant bigots.

Secondly, though, I’d explain that many Western nations, built on Christian foundations, seem to be entirely comfortable with prolonged, brutal warfare against Islamic countries, which makes uncaring mass murder a rather significant element of our ‘faith’, and that what we’ve been doing is ongoing oppression that empowers the terrorist fringe of a fringe. I’d point out, as Campos does, that the rising of the Right has succeeded in taking over our government, and is a greater internal crisis than any distant threat from angry foreigners in oil rich countries, no matter what their religion.

I mean who doesn’t recognize that white supremacy is absolutely at the ideological core of the political movement that at the moment happens to control the government of the most powerful nation in the world? Sam Harris, that’s who!

And as for the claim that there’s no connection between white supremacist ideology and fundamentalist Christianity, that would seem to be belied by the fact that fundamentalist and/or evangelical Christians make up by far the most significant voting bloc in the coalition of white supremacists and conservative ethno-nationalists (but I repeat myself) who have taken over the Republican party and most of the government of the United States.

A bad idea is a bad idea. I don’t care if it’s sponsored by a fringe of a fringe, or by mere ideologues, or by Christians or Muslims, or even by bizarrely popular atheists — racist claims that have no foundation in legitimate science and that are used to further discrimination and hatred must be opposed. Sam Harris is one of those deplorables who deserve condemnation.

He’s so oblivious and dim, too. When asked what can be done about all the racists taking advantage of social media, here is his reply:

[T]here’s just no way for us to keep track of what’s on our platform, right? So you know, the AI can’t do it. If we turn up the filter on white supremacy, we’re going to catch too many ordinary Republicans and we’re even going to catch certain Congressman, right, and we might even catch the president, and so that doesn’t work.

A scientist would say that, if we objectively tune our filters to detect expressions of white supremacy and racism, and we then find that we catch a bunch of “ordinary Republicans” who we already know are wont to spout off racist remarks, that’s a sign that the filters work. Harris’s bias is pretty naked there.

This is an opinion published by Fox News, so you already know it’s garbage, but I’ll kick it around for a bit anyway. It’s by a guy named Anthony DeStefano, who claims to have insight into the atheist mind.

There’s no polite way to say it. Atheists today are the most arrogant, ignorant and dangerous people on earth.

Even more arrogant than a Christian who thinks the entire universe was created for their people? More ignorant than a Christian who thinks the Earth is 6000 years old? Even more dangerous than a cult that controls the American government? I’ll have to see the evidence.

We’ve all seen how these pompous prigs get offended by the slightest bit of religious imagery in public and mortified if even a whisper of “Merry Christmas” escapes the lips of some well-meaning but naïve department store clerk during the “holiday season.”

No, that’s not true. Splatter as much religious imagery on your house or your church as you want. But please, the government is here to serve all the people, so the government has no place endorsing a specific sect.

Also, you won’t find many stories of atheists raging at a store clerk saying “Merry Christmas”. That has never been a problem for us. You will, on the other hand, find plenty of stories of some self-righteous Christian raging about a clerk saying “Happy Holidays”.

But really, the War on Christmas? You know this is a totally made-up conflict peddled by the likes of Bill O’Reilly, don’t you?

To cite a few recent examples: Last December, the group American Atheists launched its annual billboard campaign with the slogan: “Just Skip Church — It’s All Fake News.” In February, the American Humanist Association became furious when President Trump had the gall to mention Christianity and Jesus Christ without also mentioning atheists—at the National Prayer Breakfast! (How dare he!) And just this month, the Freedom From Religion Foundation raised holy hell because the Reverend Billy Graham was laid out in state in the Capitol Rotunda before his burial.

Yes? A billboard campaign by an atheist organization is just a publicly expressed opinion. It’s allowed.

If you are so upset that a few citizens expressed a non-binding, secular, unenforceable opinion, why are you so blase about the President using his power and his influence to tell the country that they should pray, and also using the power of the government to honor a Christian mouthpiece?

Yes, these atheists are loud, nasty, unapologetic and in-your-face.

So far, he’s backed that up with an imaginary conflict, the fact that atheists openly say that they don’t believe in church, and that the American government expresses a religious bias. Mediocre!

But while their arrogance is annoying, it’s nothing compared to their ignorance. Atheists believe that the vast majority of human beings from all periods of time and all places on the Earth have been wrong about the thing most important to them. They basically dismiss this vast majority as being either moronic or profoundly naïve. What they don’t seem to know – or won’t admit – is that the greatest contributions to civilization have been made, not by atheists, but by believers.

The vast majority of human beings from all periods of time have always believed that everyone else is wrong about gods, not just atheists. Remember, Christians were once a small minority who believed that everyone else — Jews, Romans, pagans — got the most important fact in the universe wrong, and were going to be punished with eternal damnation for it.

Atheists do know that they are a minority, and that historically they’ve been an even more minuscule minority. When the majority of people believe in a deity, then we can expect that a majority of believers will have contributed to civilization. This is not a surprise.

Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Isaac Newton all believed in God. Nobel-prize winner Wilhelm Rontgen, the discoverer of X-rays; Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry; William Keen, the pioneer of brain surgery; rocket scientist Wernher von Braun; and Ernest Walton, the first person to artificially split the atom—all believed in God.

But…but…Aristotle didn’t believe in your religion and specifically not in Jesus. Bacon, Da Vinci, and Newton all lived at times when denying Christianity would get you persecuted and punished (which is not to say that they didn’t also have cultural biases favoring belief…and Newton in particular was fervent but weirdly unorthodox). Heck, I was brought up Lutheran, although I repudiated it in my teens — does that mean a demented 16th century anti-semite gets credit for my interest in science? I think not.

And speaking of pioneers of science, who do you think coined the term “scientist” in the first place? William Whewell, an Anglican priest and theologian! He also came up with words “physicist,” “cathode”, “anode” and many other commonly used scientific terms. Essentially, the very language used by scientists today comes from the brain of a believer.

Even the Big Bang Theory itself – which atheists mistakenly think bolsters their arguments against God – was proposed by Fr. George Lemaitre, a Belgian astronomer and Roman Catholic priest! And the father of genetics—which provides the basis for the whole theory of evolution—was Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk!

Just about every 19th century English scientist was an Anglican! They probably also ate porridge, too, but we don’t go around insisting that porridge made them great scientists. Or maybe you do. It would make as much sense.

I teach genetics. I imagine everyone who does so mentions a bit of the history, and discusses Mendel specifically as a monk working in a monastery garden. We’re comfortable saying it too, and are fine with the idea that people who believed in God can also do science. Most of our American students are religious, mostly Christian but I also teach Muslims, and we don’t use the classroom to lie about history, which makes this next bit particularly ridiculous.

Yes, the new atheists have an ignorance of history bordering on madness.

You haven’t shown that. You haven’t even made an argument touching on that.

But are they really dangerous, too?

I expect more garbage arguments in defense of that claim.

You bet they are. The truth is, the atheist position is incapable of supporting any coherent system of morality other than ruthless social Darwinism. That’s why it has caused more deaths, murders and bloodshed than any other belief system in the history of the world.

I’m an atheist humanist. I reject social Darwinism. Social Darwinism was avidly endorsed by a great many Christians, you know — it’s a position that can be held independent of one’s religious beliefs.

Atheists, of course, are always claiming hysterically that Christianity has been responsible for most of the world’s wars, but that’s just another example of atheistic ignorance. The main reasons for war have always been economic gain, territorial gain, civil and revolutionary conflicts. According to Philip Axelrod’s monumental “Encyclopedia of Wars,” only 6.98 percent or all wars from 8000 BC to present were religious in nature. If you subtract Islamic wars from the equation, only 3.2 percent of wars were due to specifically Christian causes. That means that over 96 percent of all the wars on this planet were due to worldly reasons.

I have never heard an atheist claim that Christianity has been responsible for most the world’s wars. Was the American Civil War caused by Christianity? Both sides were majority Christian. What about WWI and WWII? I’ve never seen it claimed that those were religious wars at all. I’d agree that most wars have been waged for “worldly reasons”. Of course, you still have to concede that, as most Western scientific discoveries are being credited to Christians, than likewise most of those worldly wars must have been waged by religious believers. You don’t get to claim all the good things in history for godly folk and blame all the evils on an insignificant minority of atheists!

What follows is predictable.

Indeed, in the last 100 years alone, upwards of 360 million people were killed by governments—and close to half of those people were killed by atheist governments!

Yes, there is a profound and frightening connection between atheism and death. Atheist leaders like Stalin, Mao Zedong, Hideki To ̄jo ̄, Pol Pot and many others bear the blame for the overwhelming majority of deaths caused by war and mass murder in history. And while many atheists make the preposterous claim that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, his private diaries, first published in 1953 by Farrar, Straus and Young, reveal clearly that the Fuhrer was a rabid atheist: “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity,” Hitler stated, “was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew… Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.”

Interesting shift. One minute he’s arguing that almost all wars can be blamed on “worldly reasons”, in the net he leaps to claim that’s synonymous with atheism in the last century. To buttress his argument, he claims that Hitler was not a Christian, citing his private diaries. This is bogus. The “diaries” that were published in the 1980s were entirely fake; he must be referring to the “table talk” transcripts. These were not diaries, and they weren’t even particularly complete or accurate transcripts, and they weren’t good sources for Hitler’s state of mind, let alone the goals of the German leadership or the German people. They’re also plagued with a history of bad translations.

[Hitler] was that classic German type known as Besserwisser, the know-it-all. His mind was cluttered with minor information and misinformation, about everything. I believe that one of the reasons he gathered so many flunkies around him was that his instinct told him that first-rate people couldn’t possibly stomach the outpourings.

Hmmm. Sounds like he’d be a natural as a Fox News pundit nowadays.

But even if Hitler were a flaming satanist, it doesn’t change the fact that the German people were almost universally Lutheran and Catholic, and yet they willingly went to war with the world, and many participated in the Holocaust. His public speeches endorsed religion, Mein Kampf is full of religious claims of righteousness, and he had the support of the German Catholic hierarchy.

He goes on longer, but I’m bored now. To be honest, I was bored after his second paragraph. I’ll just point out that the Fox News staff must have gone looking for the most “arrogant, ignorant and dangerous” illustration they could find, and this is what they came up with.

Oooh. Scary.