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.

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.

Kirk Cameron is an idiot about so many things

Kirk Cameron recently casually and confidently said this about homosexuality:

I think that it’s unnatural. I think that it’s detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.

He never said why he knew this, or how the behavior of people in the privacy of their bedrooms undermines the whole of civilization, but I assume it was simply because he’s been brainwashed by that old book written by patriarchal crankypants, the Bible. He now confirms my assumption.

I was surprised, frankly, that people were surprised by the things that I’ve said," he explained. "I have been consistent for 15 years as a Christian. I’m a Bible-believing Christian. What I would have thought was more newsworthy is if I had said something that contradicted the word of God, if I had contradicted my faith.

Codeword alert! Be wary of that phrase, “Bible-believing”. It doesn’t mean what you think it does. “Bible-believing” is actually a very narrow, very specific phrase used by modern evangelicals that means they fervently accept a remarkably literalist, radically right-wing, extremely judgmental and vicious version of Christianity. It means he really believes he has been privileged with the words of his god, and is justified in every hateful claim he makes.

He goes on to say that he hates no one, but he earnestly believes that almost everyone is going to hell, that we atheists are very much included in the ranks of the damned, and that he’s going to be chortling over our eternal torments someday, while he’s lolling about in heaven. So sure, he doesn’t hate you: he just coldly takes joy in his certainty that you will suffer for eternity, and that you deserve it.

He doesn’t hate, sure. He’s just creepily nasty.

So that’s the tax on stupid

I was just tuning in to watch The Walking Dead … gotta see the zombies … and they keep annoying me with these commercials peddling “gold” coins: a $50 value, yours for only $9.95, and they are genuine 24K gold (plated), containing a whole 14 milligrams of gold. I checked gold prices, did a quick estimation, and figured out nearly instantly that that amounts to … about 75 cents worth.

Wow. That’s quite a racket. Shouldn’t there be something illegal about taking advantage of stupid people that excessively?

“Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation.”

I think that’s my new favorite pseudo-scientific phrase. It’s part of a whole mind-numbing compendium of utter nonsense and woo — it claims that junk DNA plays a role in data storage and communication, that it contains “basic rules of grammar”, and that it responds to your words.

This means that they managed for example to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary.

One can simply use words and sentences of the human language! This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used.

This finally and scientifically explains why affirmations, autogenous training, hypnosis and the like can have such strong effects on humans and their bodies. It is entirely normal and natural for our DNA to react to language.

Just think of all the mutant babies spawned by listening to Rush Limbaugh. But be prepared: we might be sucking in alien propaganda.

But the higher developed an individual’s consciousness is, the less need is there for any type of device! One can achieve these results by oneself, and science will finally stop to laugh at such ideas and will confirm and explain the results. And it doesn’t end there.?The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes! Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).? These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time. The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness.

Stop to laugh, everyone! It’s expected!

Now here comes the “science”:

In nature, hyper communication has been successfully applied for millions of years. The organized flow of life in insect states proves this dramatically. Modern man knows it only on a much more subtle level as “intuition.” But we, too, can regain full use of it. An example from Nature: When a queen ant is spatially separated from her colony, building still continues fervently and according to plan. If the queen is killed, however, all work in the colony stops. No ant knows what to do. Apparently the queen sends the “building plans” also from far away via the group consciousness of her subjects. She can be as far away as she wants, as long as she is alive. In man hyper communication is most often encountered when one suddenly gains access to information that is outside one’s knowledge base. Such hyper communication is then experienced as inspiration or intuition. The Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini for instance dreamt one night that a devil sat at his bedside playing the violin. The next morning Tartini was able to note down the piece exactly from memory, he called it the Devil’s Trill Sonata.

I’m going to stop there. The rest is Indigo Children, collective consciousness, UFOs, anti-gravity, and how DNA is superconducting and transforms gravity into electricity. There’s only so much I can take.

John Hembling, aka JohntheOther, slimy psycho MRA

Meet JohntheOther. He’s very concerned about the atheist movement — he wonders very seriously whether perhaps we’re vulnerable, because we lack a codified dogma, to being parasitized by psychopaths and sociopaths. He preaches at great length here about his deep concerns and his sincere worries before getting down to the details of a specific incident and dangerous individual that troubles him greatly: the sociopathic behavior of Rebecca Watson at Skepticon a few years ago.

What is it with Rebecca? She is so damned good at attracting these nutcases. And nutcase he is: he’s an MRA, one of the clueless goons behind the often and deservedly mocked MRA site A Voice for Men, and he also seems to be one of those kooks obsessed with chastising me, too (Rebecca is not alone in her her kook magnetism). He’s one of those despised pseudo-scientific pontificators who love to mangle evolutionary psychology to justify misogyny.

Narcissistic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, these are arguably not aberrations of normal human psychology at all, rather they are the amplification of female personality traits which afforded women a survival advantage throughout human pre-history. In a world of scarcity where humans often died of starvation, women with the attributes of innate selfishness and skill at manipulating men meant increased survival for themselves as well as their offspring.

Appalling. This bozo is simply using an evolutionary rationalization, free of all evidence, to justify his predetermined conclusion, that women are narcissistic, histrionic, selfish exploiters of men. I’m no fan of evolutionary psychology, but I think most evolutionary psychologists would rush to wash their hands of the taint of this contemptible fraud.

So if you watched that video, you were watching a scumbag oozing faux sincerity and concern for the skeptic and atheist movements while making a slanderous attack on someone he considers a feminist enemy. Don’t be taken in by the smarmy used-car-salesman personality. The only sociopath you should be worried about is JohntheOther.

Let me explain for JohntheOther, the guy who is incapable of reading elementary social cues, what was going on in that Skepticon incident that he so deplored.

Rebecca Watson was telling a joke. That’s extremely common at Skepticon, which has always leaned towards the light touch and humor and audience involvement, and Rebecca is a known and popular speaker who often takes a sarcastic and comedic approach to skepticism. Everyone was primed for a good time; I know I was. I was there in the audience and was one of those ‘sociopaths’ laughing along.

She told a story about how she was assigned a handler, a young woman named Kasi, when she arrived at the conference. And then she explained how, with the power going to her head, she ‘abused’ poor Kasi at extraordinary length throughout the con.

What was funny about that? Two things. First, the target of the joke: Rebecca Watson was making fun of herself, or rather, her image as wild party girl and She-Wolf of Skepticism, and mocking that image. She was not abusing poor Kasi, she was making herself the butt of a self-deprecatory joke. Secondly, she defused it all by pretending to be this petty tyrant whose great crime was sending Kasi off on a scavenger hunt. A very silly and harmless scavenger hunt. I mean, come on, JohntheOther, how can you sit there like a po-faced humorless clot worrying so much about the terrible psychological abuse being inflicted on Kasi when she was sent scurrying off to get coffee, M&Ms, condoms one day and a pregnancy test the next, and vegetarian cashew chicken? How can you listen to an obvious funny story and write,

what happens when people lack an ethical compass? What if the people we view as influential lack an ethical compass? Humans are social animals, if “leaders” are sociopathic, does it automatically follow that we all become dysfunctional?

And he says, “What I don’t understand is the laughter from the audience”, while accusing them all of being dysfunctional sociopaths. I’m sorry, JohntheOther, but the audience was responding to the patent social cues and the humorous content of the story. Why are you incapable of recognizing that? Do you have a psychological disorder?

Actually, I don’t think he’s psychologically blind to it at all: I think he’s dishonestly ginning up a lie that Rebecca Watson is a psychopath because of his ideological fixation on advancing raging misogyny. The obvious indicator of that: he left off the punchline of the joke! He shows the buildup, but doesn’t reveal the kicker that made it even more hilarious. Rebecca had let Kasi in on the plan at the very beginning: the whole Tyrant Rebecca act was a game to punk the eminently punkable JT Eberhard, the organizer of the conference. He had to know this; it was in the original video that he carefully edited and framed with his sleazy psychological ponderings.

Also, Rebecca Watson showed up in the youtube comments to explain that to him.

I can’t figure out if you purposely misinterpreted and edited the video or if you’re just very stupid. In my talk I explain that I told Kasi about the bet with JT immediately, and from then on we just pretended that I was demanding things of her. The gag was that during my talk, she pretended to quit, thereby freaking out JT, at which point I made it clear that the joke was actually on JT.

Good luck on that psychology degree, though.

Even better, Kasi shows up.

Hi, so… Kasi “the handler” here. Thanks for the lulz. That conference was the best time I had all year. I got to spend time with a person I greatly admire, Rebecca, who stayed up late talking/listening to me and went shopping with me and just proved to me that she’s an all-around wonderful person. Yes, we pranked JT, but he had no hard feelings. I wasn’t actually asked to go get her things-That was made up in the build up to the reveal during her talk. Everyone else got that besides this guy..

At this point, it should be clear: JohntheOther, aka John Hembling, owes Rebecca Watson an apology. He ought to be on his knees begging for forgiveness from the entire atheist community that he defamed with his phony accusations. He ought to be deeply embarrassed at his public display of stupidity.

Don’t expect such honest behavior, though. Here’s the reaction he posted on youtube:

is that why it had 80 up votes and 2 down votes before the RW fans arrived in force and dropped 64 down votes within a few hours? – this mob’s behavior does nothing except confirm and re-enforce my opinion of the great and mighty REB

Right. He’s exposed as a pretentious liar, and his concern is that his video got downvoted, and his opinion of Rebecca is only confirmed.

You know what else is confirmed? My opinion of MRA assholes.

the tone of the JW fans piling on here telling me how wrong, humourless, mentally deficient and horrible I am is making my case for me.

A guy who made a 16 minute video accusing Rebecca Watson of being a wicked sociopath is now complaining about tone? I think he ought to listen to all the people telling him he’s wrong, humorless, and mentally deficient — they’ve got him stone cold to rights.

Racist goddamned Florida

Trayvon Martin went to a convenience store in his family’s neighborhood to buy some candy. He was 17. He was unarmed. He was black.

George Zimmerman, a self-appointed “neighborhood watch leader”, called the police to report a “suspicious person”; he was told not to confront him, but somehow in the next few minutes Zimmerman got out there and shot and murdered Trayvon Martin. The puffed-up coward Zimmerman grabbed his gun, confronted a teenager carrying nothing but a bag of Skittles, and murdered him. There is no possible excuse, no way that there could be some exculpatory fact to justify his actions: Zimmerman was carrying a loaded gun and on a mission of self-inflated importance to defend his neighborhood (which was also Martin’s neighborhood) from suspicious young black men.

What do you think happened next, when the police arrived on the scene and found Zimmerman with a smoking gun, who immediately admitted to gunning Trayvon Martin down?

Nothing.

Zimmerman is still free. It’s been two weeks; no action is being taken. The Florida district attorney is even dragging his heels about deciding to investigate the murder, and claiming that Zimmerman was a pillar of the community.

Sign the petition. Tell racist goddamned Florida they can’t just ignore a vigilante who murders young black people.

It gets worse. Recordings of 911 calls on the night of the murder are available: Martin was screaming for help and begging for his life when Zimmerman gunned him down. And apparently what sent Zimmerman on his macho crusade to stop a suspicious suspect was that Martin was running away.

Why hasn’t he been arrested?

The obvious first step

Rick Santorum has promised a “war on porn if elected.

“Current federal ‘obscenity’ laws prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier,” Santorum wrote in the statement, adding that these laws should be “vigorously enforced.”

We’re going to have to define porn and obscenity for this to work. As a first step, I propose using use of the filthy word “Santorum” as an unambiguous indicator of pure smut.

Disband NASA! We have a better way!

Who needs rockets and space probes? We have Dr P. V. Vartak an MD who does experiments in his spare time. Here’s part of his list:

First experiment of Astral Travel in Samadhi to the planet Mars was performed on 10th August, 1975. A report of his 21 observations was published, out of which 20 observations were fully corroborated by the spaceship Viking 1, after 21st July, 1976, i.e. almost one year after his observations. The 21st observation about ancient water and moss on the Mars was established by another spaceship, the Pathfinder in 1987, 12 years later.

In his second experiment of Astral Travel on 12th August, 1976, he observed by Clairvoyance the docking of spaceships Viking-1 & Viking-2. Advance observation by him was subsequently confirmed by NASA on 7th Sept. 1976.

In yet another Astral Travel to the planet Jupiter on 27th August 1977 , he made 18 distinct observations on the Jupiter. Spaceship Voyager corroborated his 10 observations in 1979, while the remaining observations are yet to be tangibly proved, may be, through some future space program of humanity.

In 1980, during his Samadhi, he saw a man on a celestial body in another Solar System . He has published his findings through this transcendental feat in his book , ‘Scientific Explanation of the Katha Upanishad.’

USA had planned to launch a spaceship to the Saturn to reach & study the planet in 2004. He, through his transcendental visit to Saturn visualized that the Saturn is a ball of three types of revolving heavy gases, having purple, yellow and black shades. The famous ring of Saturn is made of some material like slurry or mud along with floating rocks. There are no land marks on the Saturn because there is no formation of land. In the third edition (2003) of his autobiography ‘ Brahmarashichi Samaranayatra’, he has published his observations about the planet Saturn.

Take that, Phil Plait! Astronomy has just become superfluous!

Unfortunately, Dr Vartak’s credibility isn’t perfect. He was a surgeon, would you believe…would you let this guy anywhere near you with a knife?

One thing he’s good for: he’s a Hindu theologian. Point some of those fanatical Christians to his publishings every time they start asserting the truth of the Bible — Vartak plays the same game of treating holy writ as scientific data, and comes to the conclusion that the Upanishads were literally true and accurate in every regard. Besides, that Jesus guy was a Tamil Hindu, don’t you know.