New strategy: if we sow enough confusion about what knowledge is, we can win!

I’ve never heard of Alex Beam before, which is a good thing — he seems to be some kind of journalist at the Boston Globe, and that’s about all I know about him, other than that he seems to be an oblivious idiot. He has a column up in which he rages about the phrase “knowledge-based”, apparently because he doesn’t understand it. His first target is to fulminate against that expression, “reality based”, which many on the left adopted after the lunacy of the Bush presidency, a phrase invented by the Bushies to describe us:

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality–judiciously, as you will–we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Beam doesn’t understand this. His rebuttal registers complete incomprehension.

The Bush presidency always seemed quite fact-freighted to me. The 9/11 attacks were plenty factual, as were the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the tens of thousands of deaths that ensued.

Yes. People died on 9/11; that’s real. Even more people died in Afghanistan and Iraq; that’s also real. What Beam glosses over is that there was no credible connection between those two countries and the deaths in New York, and that the Right failed to “create” their own personal, private reality.

A reality-based community would suggest that when you’re attacked, you should respond by evaluating the causes and retaliate appropriately, rather than deciding that here’s a fine time to build an empire. I don’t think that’s so hard to understand.

Then he throws another random example at us.

What in heaven’s name, for instance, is “evidence-based medicine”? Here is a quote from the august British Medical Journal that should set us straight: “Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.” And the opposite of this would be … divination? Are men and women trooping out of the nation’s medical schools trained to flip coins or toss the I Ching on the floor of the intensive care unit if a diagnosis isn’t quickly forthcoming?

Deepak Chopra. Oprah Winfrey. The Center for Spirituality and Healing. Homeopathy. Acupuncture. Reflexology. Iridology. Dr Oz. Anti-vaccination movements. Therapeutic Touch.

Yes, some of them are coming out of our med schools, most are pouring out over the television and radio — we have swarms of men and women peddling non-evidence-based medicine, utter, non-functional, untested, useless garbage at sick people. There clearly are a great many quacks pushing fake remedies that ignore and even contradict the evidence.

Alex Beam must live inside a windowless Faraday cage to be unaware of the realities that are being flouted every day. And he really calls himself a journalist? He does conclude with an ironic comment.

Knowledge-based journalism? Good grief. If that catches on, people like me will be out of a job.

We can always hope.

Republicans love guns

They’re just not very bright and don’t know much about them.

Richard Ruelas, a reporter for The Arizona Republic, found himself staring down the barrel of Republican state Sen. Lori Klein’s raspberry-pink firearm during a recent interview at the Capitol.

“Oh, it’s so cute,” Klein said of the .380 Ruger that she carries in purse at all times.

While the loaded pistol had no safety and the laser pointer was centered on the reporter’s chest, Klein explained that there was no need to worry.

“I just didn’t have my hand on the trigger,” she said.

I think there’s good cause to revoke her permit to carry, and for the NRA to come howling down on her in righteous wrath. Not that I imagine for an instant that it will actually happen.

Two awful no-good terribad miserable arguments

They keep dragging me back in. I try to drop it, but my inbox is full of people still arguing this point, and it’s getting ridiculous. The thing is, they keep throwing godawfully bad arguments at me, as if they’re trying to hit me in the head with a brick enough times to make me stupid enough to believe them. It’s not going to work. Here are a few of the worst of the bad arguments.

Let’s stop the shouting that Richard Dawkins is some kind of raving misogynist. What’s happened here is that he is at some remove from all of the details, and this issue got blown up by lunatics who felt their manhood threatened and who exaggerated the situation to an absurd degree. I think he is wrong, but what he was arguing against was a cartoon of feminism which far too many people have been peddling on the blogs.

What cartoon of feminism, you might ask? This is the most common bad argument I’ve been seeing, and here’s a doozy of an example:

Atheist Flagellants and Puritans. Try reading this and recognizing even a dim resemblance to the events that triggered this episode.

The latest moral panic / fart-in-a-bathtub comes, rather depressingly, via Skepchick’s Rebecca Watson, who you could be excused for expecting to be above such trite gamespersonship. In this case exploiting a perceived atrocity against that most terrifying of socio-theo-politico-morasses: the sacred temple of the divine yoni and all of its sensitivity and delicateness. A blasphemy against the purity of the holy of holies, the supreme goddess-hood, the sublime and perfect eternal feminine, the über-she who’s poop smells like cinnamon buns…

Yeah, perhaps that is stretching the point. But there is no other way to try and get a handle on the way conventional reality simply vaporises and all commonsense ceases to play any role when the deadly combination of pussy, circumstance, insecurity and a readily available male patsy to blame everything on combine in surreal Grand Guignol – especially when the masses rally behind it and give it a good head of indignant steam. This is all grist for the misandrist blog industry, but it is particularly disheartening seeing it become such a staple amongst the godless and allegedly “freethinking” rationalist communities.

This was posted under the category “shrieking hysteria”. I think it was self-referential. The rest of the post doesn’t get any calmer, either.

Let me remind you what really happened, without the “divine yoni” and “Grand Guignol” and self-righteous accusations of misandry. A woman was awkwardly propositioned. She said no. She later briefly addresses atheists in a youtube video to say, “guys, don’t do that”.

So let’s just be clear here. If your version of the events requires comically strident exaggeration in order to make a case, you’re definitely wrong, and you are to blame for the discord and confusion. You are lying. And, by the way, if you even mention the words “misandrist blog industry”, you’re a flaming conspiracy nut.

Here’s another example of disgracefully bad argumentation, this time from an
online advice columnist who seems to specialize in pandering to adolescent male fantasies. This is the pseudo-biological argument that it is the male’s nature to hit on women all the time, everywhere, and how dare we stymie such natural impulses?

Men “sexualize” women. Ladies, they want to have sex with you, your sister, your sister’s friend, your sister’s friend’s friend, the cashier, the waitress, the lady with the big luscious ass who’s crossing the street, and her sister and her sister’s friend. If men weren’t like this, the planet would be filled with plants and cockroaches instead of human beings.

If it is troubling to you to be sexualized, stay home, or only leave the house in a big black burka.

Start fucking right now, everyone! We have to outcompete the cockroaches, and the only alternative is to wear a burka!

You know, it’s true that men (me among them) have frequent sexual thoughts, and we do notice secondary sexual characteristics, and we do enjoy sex. If we actually do have sex several times a week, and have two or three children over the course of our lifetimes, then we’ve pretty much fulfilled our reproductive obligations, we can rest assured that the cockroaches won’t overwhelm us, and that humanity’s fate is secure. It’s kind of amazing, actually, that those responsibilities can be carried out in such a small fraction of our time, and that we can have fun while safeguarding the future of the species. So what are we going to do with all of our free time?

Hey, how about conversation and learning and science and art and music and engineering and mathematics and dancing and movies and reading and…say, it turns out we do a lot of things, and they take up more of our time than sex (for most of us, anyway), and also, they’re things that make us human and not cockroaches or plants. We are surprisingly well capable of setting the sexual impulses aside for most of our lives and doing other interesting things. I really don’t think there’s a problem here that requires indulgence in sex at will to solve.

It’s also misleading. Women have the same sexual desires (cue argument that the cockroaches will defeat us if women don’t surrender to those desires right now), but notice — most don’t want to have sex non-stop, either. Maybe they’d also like to read a book or have a conversation, too.

This poor excuse for an advice columnist is full of contradictions. After telling us how men want to have sex with every female, she reveals that that isn’t actually true.

My dad told me to worry when men stop asking you out, when construction workers stop whistling. You want to “have the power”? When somebody whistles at you, smile and wave and be on your way. Don’t be (and act) all offended down to your ugly feminist-approved shoes.

Oh. So her definition of power is “men want to have sex with you”. And inevitably, someday, you’ll be old and ugly and men won’t want to have sex with you, so you’ll lose all your power. How sad. As for feminists: ugly shoes. There, we’re done with them!

You don’t even want to crawl into the comments at that site. We’re getting a lot of accusations that those feminists leave hateful, mean comments, but you’ve got to compare them to comments made by hysterical men to get some perspective. There are several that point out that Rebecca Watson is, apparently, powerless because she’s ugly and a lesbian.

And then there’s this comment, which creepily makes a perfect point for Watson’s reasonable concern.

Jeez, what meathead. Skepchick, that is. Look, I’m 6″2, I’m lean and I’m strong. If I’m in an elevator with a woman asking her out, I’m not trying to rape her. If I wanted to rape her, I would. Like the average woman can put up any kind of resitance to a man who wants to rape her. But, this is the interesting part – we don’t want to. Of course 90% of all women know this. Of course we don’t want to rape you. We really, really like you. We don’t want to hurt you. You smell nice, you look good in skirts, some of you are even kind enough to give the occational blow job. We don’t want to hurt you.

When some idiot like this spreads the notion that a guy asking her out is a potential rapist, she’s insulting everyone. She’s insulting the women who are supposed to believe her, she’s insulting us, the men, suggesting we are rapist. She’s insulting those poor, unfortunate women who really have been raped. Even worse, perhaps some men will think “damn, could that really be perceived in that way? I’m never asking anyone out in an elevator”…and next week, she’ll be complaining that some guy in a bar offered her a drink. We need MORE dating and MORE screwing in this world. With women like this in power there’d be less screwing. We’d still be screwed, though.

Case closed. I think Jesper here has done a far better job of making me ashamed to share a gender with him than anything Rebecca Watson could ever say. I think I need to take a shower after reading that.

To wash that unpleasant taste out of our mouths, let me suggest some good posts to read. Lindsay Beyerstein has an excellent, restrained, and accurate summary — no divine yonis in evidence. Stephanie Svan has a depressing series of testimonials from women who have been abused (trigger warnings galore!); this is not a negligible problem here in the first world, and there are many women who have justified fears of being caught in situations that Jesper seems to find romantic. I particularly recommend the comment from Doubting Thomas, which will chill you to the bone.

I repeat, though, that the story Rebecca Watson told was tempered, moderate, and polite, with only a reasonable request that the atheist community demonstrate a little more respect for women, and that it was not the hysterical feminazi nonsense so many people are claiming. And that appeals to base nature and testosterone do not justify uncivilized behavior, ever — we are human beings, animals with far more complex and diverse behaviors than that.

Also, the Amazing Meeting is coming up this week, and many of the principals involved in this argument are going to be there. Some people seem to think this topic is going to be the major discussion point there: it isn’t. We’ve all got our talks lined up in advance, the theme is space exploration, I’m working on a talk about the likely nature of aliens, and at best feminist etiquette is going to be babbled over in the bar afterward. I’m also getting a little fed up with dealing with such patently bogus arguments, anyway. The JREF has posted some sensible guidelines, though, just in case — so remember, treat your fellow attendees as human beings first.

We might as well have some fun with the oblivious commentariat. Here’s your bingo card!

i-fda83f3e2558e7c3b1c1f34bc5ccafc4-antifem_bingo.jpeg

(via Katie Hartman)

Texas explained at last

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.

Stop digging!

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.

When Be gets an analogy in his head, nothing is going to shake it loose

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.

I get email

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.

Canadians aren’t all nice and polite, except for the godless ones

Some team in Canada won the Stanley Cup, which prompted happy revelers to…riot and destroy public property? I have never understood that behavior; when something good happens in my life, I’ve just never felt the slightest desire to celebrate by setting a police car on fire.

I shall now embarrass all the good Canadians by showing a video of Canadians behaving very, very badly.

All honor is not lost, however: one reporter documented the Vancouver riots, and then found refuge in a bar full of sensible atheists.

I walked to the back toward windows looking down on the street and met a posse of friendly atheist gamers who asked how it was outside. We watched some videos on my phone, ordered a pitcher of beer, then hung out for hours chatting away about all sorts of things until the streets looked a lot more clear.

Good on Caustic Soda for representing the better side of Canada and atheism!

Oops. I’ve been informed that the Canadian team lost a hockey game, which, of course, justifies city-wide rioting and flaming cars in the street. My error.

Not the puppy dog!

Religion really does make people crazy. Here’s a story about a dog who walked into a Jewish court.

The dog entered the Jerusalem financial court several weeks ago and would not leave, reports Israeli website Ynet.

It reminded a judge of a curse passed on a now deceased secular lawyer about 20 years ago, when judges bid his spirit to enter the body of a dog.

So, obviously, this stray mutt must contain the displaced, reincarnated soul of a dead lawyer. At least, that’s what somebody steeped in magical thinking would assume.

If you have an animal possessed by the soul of a lawyer (what? Satan was busy?), what’s the next step? Obviously, you have to kill the dog, and since you’re a traditionalist, stoning is the method of choice. Again, if you’re full of theological wackiness.

Then, because you are incompetent at managing reality rather than your fantasy life, the dog escapes (Hooray! There’s one heartwarming moment in this story, at least). What to do next? Tell all the children to hunt down the dog and kill it.

Way to pass on humane values to your kids, rabbis!

Do they even realize this is testable?

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.