Lord Monckton, the wacky climate skeptic, demonstrates another common feature of these crackpots: he doesn’t just have one domain of supreme quackery, it extends everywhere…and he is now claiming to have a cure for HIV and the common cold. I haven’t been able to track down what this panacea is, other than that it is a drug and that he has patented it.
It’s demons. The whole state is infested with ’em.
There was a big conference on exorcism offered by the Catholic church in Texas; it was apparently well-attended by an enthusiastic crowd who were anxious to learn how to purge the state of evil invisible magic beings. Bishop Pfeifer had this to say:
Pfeifer said he believes there is demonic influence in West Texas manifested through cults…
Oh, sure, he went on to say the demons were secular and on the internet, but I think he would have been better served looking at the wackaloons babbling at his conference.
After the public scorn Scott Adams received in response to his appalling “pegs and holes” post that tried to play the self-pity card — Adams is so disadvantaged by being a man — he sent out an invitation to various magazines to engage in a public dialog.
I’d like to offer an opportunity to one of the writers at Salon, Huffington Post, Jezebel, Mediate, or Mediabistro. Allow me to interview you, by email, for this blog, on the topic of why you so vehemently disagree with your hallucination of my opinion. (Fair warning: It won’t work out well for you.)
Salon took him up on it. It isn’t working out so well for Scott Adams, who is looking even more like an irrational, whiny prick.
I patiently explained all that was wrong with Be Scofield’s characterization of atheists; now he has written back and said
I am wrong, wrong, wrong. I’m just going to focus on his first weird point, because the whole thing is disposable, but I feel like making a token effort anyway.
A good part of his argument was an analogy run amuck. He tried to argue that criticizing liberal religion for extremist religious actions must mean I don’t like liberal politics (that is, I must be an anarchist!) or I am a hypocrite. I explained yesterday that this wasn’t the case, I have no problem with the liberal part of “liberal religion”, so his comparison is way off. As I said then:
Liberal and Moderate Religion Justifies Religious Extremism. Scofield has completely missed the point. Liberal religion isn’t blamed for promoting illiberalism, it’s guilty of promoting religion. Nobody is arguing that the antithesis is responsible for the thesis, but that liberal religion and extremist religion hold something in common: the abdication of reason in favor of faith. They are both philosophies that undermine critical thinking. And without that safeguard of demanding reasonable evidence for propositions, they’re left vulnerable to bad ideas.
Now he has apparently failed to comprehend my explanation, because his new article, which sounds rather angry (I thought he was supposed to deplore that?), takes that very same rhetorical game and turns it up to 11, as if amplifying the flaws in his logic might somehow convince me to overlook them.
Liberal and extremist forms of government also share many of the same harmful common foundations: the use of propaganda, social control, loss of self identity for the country (nationalism), stifling of critical thinking, faith in leaders, manipulation…etc.
Wait, what? In order to force his analogy to work, he has to claim that the foundation of liberal government is propaganda, social control, nationalism, an absence of critical thinking, and faith in the leadership? I’d consider those the opposite of liberal government, and I think he’s confused a liberal democracy with fascism.
At this point, I think we’re done. Scofield has resorted to making absurd claims about the nature of liberal democracy the premise of his comparison, so there’s not really any point in arguing further with him. For the sake of completeness, though, so I don’t get accused of taking him out of context, here’s the remainder of his paragraph.
When these are taken to the extremes the results are horrific. For militant anarchists the answer is clear: ALL government is the problem because moderate government is an “open invitation to extremism.” They BOTH share the same problem – government and the things that go along with it. Unless Myers also believes the same is true for government then he is already able to make the meaningful distinctions that I’m asking him to make about religion. Whatever the reasons that Myers might give for seeing gradations and variations in government without denouncing it entirely, (despite the presence of shared harmful and irrational elements in both its liberal and extremist forms that can lead to very dangerous outcomes) I am asking him to make the same types of distinctions in regards to religion. If he can do it in relation to government he can do it in relation to religion. Otherwise he needs to explain why religion should be singled out to be denounced entirely when many of the same extremely irrational and problematic conditions (faith in the state/leaders and stifling of free/critical thinking) have existed in government. Why doesn’t tolerant and democratic government receive the same blame that liberal religion does when they both share harmful elements of their extremist counterparts? If a shared common foundation of things that stifle critical thinking is the reasoning for denouncing an entire category then it must apply to government.
See? If we just assume tyranny and oppression are the basis of the ideal liberal government, and that this is the identical relationship faith has to liberal religion, then Scofield gets to pretend that I ought to be making exactly the same criticisms of liberal government that I do of liberal religion.
Got it? I can now see exactly where Scofield is coming from, and it is a very warped place inhabited by someone who is not very bright.
This email is different than the usual rants and threats and claims about creationism disproving evolution — instead, my correspondent claims that the Catholic church knew about evolution all along. All I learned from the letter, though, is that he doesn’t have a clue about what evolution is.
Dear Professor Myers,
I am very confused [Ah, if only he’d stopped there, the letter would have been perfect] as to why you think evolution is incompatible with Christianity. Since its earliest days, Catholics have maintained the mutability of species. For example:
1) Saint Jerome commented on Jeremiah 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil” (RSV.) In a letter to Oceanus, Saint Jerome wrote: “By the reading of the prophet the eunuch of Candace the queen of Ethiopia is made ready for the baptism of Christ. [Hang on now…so this eunuch somehow changes the skin color of the queen of Ethiopia to something acceptable to the Catholic church, and this is evidence of evolution? I don’t think so. Racist magic tricks aren’t valid evidence.] Acts 8:27-38 Though it is against nature the Ethiopian does change his skin and the leopard his spots. Jeremiah.” In a letter to Paulinus, he writes “[Jeremiah] speaks of a rod of an almond tree Jeremiah 1:11 and of a seething pot with its face toward the north, and of a leopard which has changed its spots.”[I don’t think Ryan understands evolution at all if he thinks this hodge-podge of biblical nonsense is evidence that they were keeping up with Darwin.]
2) Saint Francis de Sales, in his book Living Love, wrote: “I heard of a little land animal in the Indies that enjoys swimming with fish. By engaging in this activity, it becomes a fish. A land animal actually turns into a marine animal. When we enjoy God, we become conformed to God.” (Living Love, page 69)” [This ain’t evolution. An individual animal magically changing form has nothing to do with evolution. Where’s natural variation and populations changing over time?]
3) Athanasius Kircher, a 17th century Jesuit polymath, thought that environmental pressures caused species to change over time, according to Professor Will Parcell of Wichita State University (http://georegister.org/publications/2010_presentGSA_Kircher.pdf). He also thought that God created a changing world because it “shows forth the infinite power of God and the incertitude of human fate.. [A]ll things are fleeting and subject to the variable fates of fortune and destruction so that [we] might raise [our] minds, studies, soul and intellect, which no created things can satisfy, to sublime and eternal possession, and gaze at God alone, in whose hand are all the powers of the realms and the destines of universal nature.” (translation of Kircher by Goodwin) [This ain’t evolution, either. There were lots of people arguing for the transformation of species before Darwin; where it changed is that Darwin provided a mechanism, and it wasn’t god showing off his immortality by making things die.]
4) Blessed John Henry Newman, writing in 1868, said that “”the theory of Darwin, true or not, is not necessarily atheistic; on the contrary, it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of divine providence and skill.” He also wrote against Paley’s argument, in his book Idea of University, published before Darwin’s publication, saying that it leads to pantheism and belittles God. [You can accept evolution for the most part while believing in some kind of god; you cannot accept the full implications of evolution while believing there is a master plan behind it.]
5) Blessed Pope John Paul II, in 1996, re-iterated that evolution is compatible with Catholicism. [As long as you accept the reality of Adam and Eve and a magical moment of ensoulment sometime back in the paleolithic.]
Please stop hating Christianity. [No. I find nothing of worth in Christianity, and smug ignoramuses quoting bible verses at me confirm my contempt. Thanks for doing your part.] I know it’s trite to say, but Jesus loves and wants you to be happy.[No, he doesn’t exist. And if he did, you have no claim to knowledge of his desires.] You will be in my prayers, [Keep on wasting your time. I’m sure it’s about as effective as this letter.]
Ryan
Poor Ryan is at the Catholic University of America. He has my profoundest sympathies for his continuing mental debilitation.
The things that go on during Christian revivals…here’s a crazy preacher claiming that conversion changes your DNA. Right.
How does this even work?
(via Joe. My. God.)
Could this be some kind of strange poe? If you look for “onkneesforjesus”, there is a blog that features this video, and the tagline for the blog is…
My life is all about getting on my knees and faithfully serving Jesus until He comes.
I find it very hard to believe that was written by someone oblivious to the meaning.
Don’t be surprised, though. It’s only natural.
Now consider human males. No doubt you have noticed an alarming trend in the news. Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world. The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn’t blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society’s tools for keeping things under control.
The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?
Let us consider the many stupidities he offers us.
“Raping, cheating, and being offensive” are “natural” to men. You know, I have never in my life felt even the slightest urge to rape anyone; I’d go so far as to say that I’d have to be forced to rape, would probably find myself physically incapable of the act, and would find violent assault to be incredibly unnatural. I’ve also never been tempted to cheat on my wife (that’s a little bit unnatural, but then she’s got magic powers). I confess, I can be offensive to people, but that’s just me — most people quail at the thought of offending others. So here we have some presumptions about men that are just plain false.
And what’s with this “natural” nonsense anyway? It’s meaningless. What he’s really doing is trying to justify bad behavior with the “well, everyone else is doing it” excuse. It’s a logical fallacy. It doesn’t work. It especially doesn’t work when everyone else isn’t doing it.
Then he whines about us poor pitiful men, whose “natural” instincts (to rape, apparently) are so restricted, while women just get to run riot and do whatever they feel like doing — “blame and shame” are almost never, ever applied to control women’s behavior.
Stop laughing so hard! I see you out there with my magic blog-o-vision, goggling unbelievingly at the very idea that women are unconstrained by societal conventions.
All Scott Adams has written is a plea to allow him to indulge his whims without condemnation, coupled with a presumably inadvertent admission that some of his whims are pretty damned repulsive. Sorry, guy, if you dream of harming fellow members of your culture, you’re going to be slapped down and told you don’t get to do that. Go live in a cave if you resent having to get along with others and respect their autonomy.
He also descends into comical self-pity. Here’s what he imagines the natural conclusion of his oppression by a society that won’t let him rape women will end.
Long term, I think science will come up with a drug that keeps men chemically castrated for as long as they are on it. It sounds bad, but I suspect that if a man loses his urge for sex, he also doesn’t miss it. Men and women would also need a second drug that increases oxytocin levels in couples who want to bond. Copulation will become extinct. Men who want to reproduce will stop taking the castration drug for a week, fill a few jars with sperm for artificial insemination, and go back on the castration pill.
We already have chemical castration drugs: cyproterone and medroxyprogesterone acetate, for instance. They aren’t big sellers for the pharmaceutical companies (well, the latter is used by women as a contraceptive, marketed as Depo-Provera, so that’s doing all right), but Viagra is a massive money-maker. There isn’t any political pressure to put cyproterone in our drinking water, either. His future is already here, and it doesn’t seem to have worked out exactly like he imagines.
It also seems that some of us men are living happy, rape-free lives with cheerful, unassaulted sexual partners, and are also engaging frequently in enthusiastic sex without feeling like society is forcing us to do something weird and unnatural, and also without feeling that our happiness can only come by causing our partners misery. Poor little Scotty. I get the impression that he doesn’t find his sex life all that satisfying.
Let’s see…Darwin revealed the theory of evolution in 1859, and the United States declared their independence from Britain in 1776 — but our founding fathers were such magical geniuses that they foresaw the whole thing and debated the subject there in Philadelphia and resolved that evolution was a bunch of hooey. Right.
the founding fathers…already had the entire debate on creation/evolution…and you’ve got Thomas Paine, the least religious of the founding fathers, saying you got to teach creation science in the public school classroom, the scientific method demands it!
Hey, David Barton, could you find that quote where Thomas Jefferson explained mathematically how black holes form, and the the quote where Madison deduces the detailed chemical structure of DNA? I’m sure you’ve got it somewhere at your fingertips.
Maybe most importantly, you should dig up a citation from George Washington in which he testifies that David Barton is a credible historian.
Man, what is it with Christians? Another one goes after me in an article titled Why P.Z. Meyer is Afraid, and a fellow just has to wonder how deeply they are capable of reading when they so grossly misspell my name all the time. “Myers”: it’s only five letters long, and it’s the most common spelling variant of that name in the US.
Anyway, it’s the usual litany: I’m uncivil and rude, I’m popular, I have a brute squad, I’m nasty, and I “attack the person rather than the argument”. That last one is particularly ironic because the entire post is nothing but an attack on me, and doesn’t even tackle my argument.
And what prompted this outburst? My post on Moshe Averick and his lack of understanding. Go ahead, read it; despite fuming over it, my IDiot critic doesn’t bother to include a link to it, possibly because it refutes his claims. The worst thing I say about Averick is that he’s a clueless creationist, right after explaining why he has missed the point. The post is about how complexity and design are independent properties, and how you can’t use complexity as a proxy for design, despite the fact that that is almost the entirety of the intelligent design case.
It was an attack on the argument, not the person. Sad, deluded Joel doesn’t even understand that. But then, his brain has been addled from “dealing with matters of deep theology (in particular the Trinity and Incarnation)”. Poor boy. [Yes, that’s an attack on the person. Study it, Joel, and learn what it actually is.]
Johan Huibers, the owner of a construction company in the Netherlands, is way ahead of Ken Ham. He has actually begun construction of a replica of Noah’s Ark, and his even floats—although he accomplishes that by cheating, building his ark as a wooden superstructure on top of an array of bolted-together steel barges.
The revealing factoid about this crank, though, is this:
Actually, this ark is not the first that Mr. Huibers has built. He first began dreaming of an ark in 1992, shortly after a heavy storm lashed the coastal region north of Amsterdam where he lives. His wife, Bianca, a police officer, opposed the idea.
“She said no, but by 2004 I had built a smaller ark, 225 feet long, to sail through the Dutch canals,” he said. It became a minor sensation. He charged adult visitors $7 to board it.
“More than 600,000 people came, in about three years,” he said. He said he made about $3.5 million, enough to clear a profit of $1.2 million.
Crazy pays, and there is a sucker born every minute.
