Atheists aren’t bubble-headed apologists for disasters

Gregory Paul makes an interesting point — atheist perspectives are underrepresented in the media. If there’s a disaster, they immediately go to someone who will babble some reassuring pablum about God.

What we do hear about without end is the theists’ view on the dreadful deaths of children. As per Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin who said, “By the grace of God, my family was safe,” after they by pluck and luck survived the Guadalupe River catastrophe. This detached view, in which the creator — who has the power to prevent dreadful random deaths — is ardently thanked for being selective about it rather than preventing it all in the first place, is the theme repeated as a matter of course. Typically by Christians after the latest natural disaster in the form of storms, the tornadoes that afflict the Bible Belt especially, wildfires, quakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, avalanches and the like. As per the flood survivor who said, “God, I know you brought me out, he marked me” (WashPost 7/11). But not dozens of girls. To that add the professional clergy and theologians who — despite their deep bias — the media persistently turn to to opine on why the latest killer event may appear hard to explain, but insist all must understand is truly in accord with the existence of a loving and wise creator.

Have you ever heard an open and assertive atheist be asked in a mainstream venue what those who do not believe in the supernatural think about natural tragedies and that is just so left field that let’s have a good chuckle at the notion. Do you ever see us atheos have a place on a panel of pundits to provide the nontheist perspective on anything on CNN or MSNBC? Of course not. Never happens. (You can check out secularfrontier.infidels.org/2022/06/theocancel-culture-discrimination-by-neglect-the-chronic-news-and-opinion-media-bigotry-against-atheists.)

Except…I have a counter-example! About eleven years ago, a tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, destroying homes and businesses, and Wolf Blitzer was on the scene, interviewing survivors. At the end of this excerpt, Wolf tells Rebecca Vitsmun, You gotta thank the lord. Do you thank the lord? She replies, “I’m actually an atheist.”

So it happens sometimes, by accident, and the media personalities try to wedge the atheist into a god-shaped perspective. It doesn’t work. How can you talk to a person standing in front of the wreckage of their home after a natural disaster and ask them to be thankful? If it’s worse than a demolished house — it’s dead children — how dare you draft some pious airhead to tell you on television that it was part of a divine plan?

Paul explains what we atheists think about piles of suffering and dead children.

Until humans busted their scientific butts to produce modern medicine, half the children died. To the tune of 50 billion children tortured to early deaths. Largely by a too long host of cruel diseases that squeezed the life out of them. Smallpox and malaria alone have snuffed out tens of billions of little ones. The situation could not be worse because higher youth mortality would crash the human population. Even this very day, many thousands will succumb to microbes without the intervention of the divine.

Where, we atheists must ask you theists, is the grace in this? Where was the wise creator when the little girls at the Christian summer camp – yes, we note the irony – were living out the last moments of their short lives in lethal agonizing terror? Where was the grace of God when, as Jesus who Christians claim was God, was curing a few children via miracle spectacles while half the rest of kids around the world died as per the historical norm? These are entirely legitimate questions that believers must provide solid answers to. But they cannot. There is far too much in the way of premature death to do that. Instead, we hear platitudes and clichés that come across as a knee jerk cover up. As per the little flood victims are now in the arms of the same homicidally negligent Jesus who did not see fit to keep them safe in the first place.

Christians love to talk about the angels that protect the little ones. Where were those angels on July 4th in the flood zone? Why did the good with God Christians running the Mystic camp not ensure that none of their cabins were subject to flooding? But those are human beings and we big brained apes mess up all the time, atheists included. Why did the all-capable God not inspire them to properly protect their charges? Why did the immaculate creator of the entire universe put anyone in danger in the first place? Why did it not with a lift of its little finger ensure that massive rains not drench the Texas hill country and prevent the mess from the get-go? What have required mere, caring thought on its part. Having not done that, how could it stand by and watch the children praying for help as they experienced the tormenting drowning process which often involves vomiting (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8928428) while He in his perfect wisdom prepared to welcome them to paradise without their first making a mature choice on the matter?

That is what we — appalled at the Christian wave away — atheists think. As well we should. The problem is not with us. It is with you. Do you not get why so many reject the arrogant God that would be so indifferent about the endless suffering and early death of so many? It is you who need to do a big moral rethink – as increasing numbers are.

No wonder we don’t get much airtime. We tend to place the blame on human actions or inactions, rather than putting the guilt on a ghost in the sky.

I am suddenly craving a pizza from Detroit

I think the nearest Little Caesars to me is in St Cloud, about a 2 hour drive away. I think the company must hire people like Hiro Protagonist from Snow Crash to make their pizzas.

Stopped into this Little Caesars just trying to get a $6 pizza and ended up in a full on action movie. Just as | grabbed my order, this furious dude barges in yelling about how | cut him off in traffic earlier. Before | can even respond, he throws a punch but then out of nowhere the guy behind the counter jumps over it like he’s been waiting for this moment his whole life and just beats the living hell out of the guy. The guy ran off and the cashier just dusted himself off. | said “are you ok man” and he looked me dead in the eye and said “B*tch, this is Little Caesars. We always hot and ready.”
Five stars. Will absolutely return.

Another problem with the Democrats

Adam Schiff is generally a good guy on the issues, but like many Democratic leaders, he’s wearing rose colored glasses and has a weird view of the past.

Reagan was an unholy nightmare. Trump may be worse, but please don’t paper over the crimes of Reagan: the death of so many people afflicted with HIV, Iran-contra, the enabling of right-wing media, training the electorate to accept brain dead idiocy in the president. The roots of our current problems were planted in the 1980s by the Republican apparatus, and we should not be treating Reagan as a paragon.

Would we be better off with Ronald Reagan in the presidency? I don’t think so.

Off to the doctor!

I had my MRI that identified a torn meniscus last week, and now at last I have an appointment where, I presume, I’ll find out what can be done. I have low expectations. I am a little worried that my appointment is with an orthopedic surgeon — I’d rather do PT than get surgery. I’ll find out shortly.

Never mind, the appointment is tomorrow, and I’m a doddering old fool so anxious to end my misery that I put the wrong date in my calendar.

It’s just a movie

This new Superman movie has triggered the same hysterical over-reaction that Barbie did: accuse it of being “woke”, be outraged that Superman was portrayed as an immigrant (like he’s always been portrayed), centering the story on kindness and opposition to war (ditto). The spectacle here isn’t the movie — it’s just a movie — but the way right-wing pundits have exploded with over-the-top hatred of the themes of the movie. It’s bizarre and stupid. Amanda Marcotte has an explanation for why they’re doing this.

The reasons right-wing pundits engage in this are transparent. The biggest is simple attention economics. Glomming onto popular topics is a good way to attract new audiences, especially those who may not be that political, and lure them into engaging with reactionary content. It also helps feed the paranoia that fuels the right, by propping up the narrative that all of pop culture is out to destroy them and their way of life. The ultimate goal is to persuade people to reject movies, music, TV and other cultural artifacts as “woke” or “Satanic,” and turn exclusively to MAGA influencers for their entertainment needs. Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire even has a movie studio where they turn out subpar content that only has an audience because they’ve convinced right-wingers to eschew quality films as too “liberal.”

My initial reaction when I saw right-wing media conduct its all-too-predictable tantrum over the new “Superman” movie was that it’s just more of the same: Claim it’s “woke” propaganda, work the audience into a tizzy of boycott threats and reap the reward of alienating their base further from the rest of society so that the MAGA cult is all they have left. Which, to be fair, is bad enough. But the actual content of the complaints made this whole exercise even more sinister. The attacks on “Superman” are part of a larger effort by the right to completely rewrite history, so they can pretend that being a patriotic American means embracing authoritarian values.

A positive story about an immigrant treating people with kindness defies the current Republican program. They need to demonize “wokeness” before people realize that mass deportations and concentration camps and giving a con artist a free run over the resources of the country is a bad idea.

This is part of a larger and far more serious effort by Trump and the MAGA movement to rewrite history, and therefore, to rewrite what the story of America even is. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been hyperfocused on erasing all acknowledgement that women, people of color and queer people have long served in the military, all to prop up his childish fantasy that the only real heroes are white men. Under the guise of stopping “DEI,” shorthand for “diversity, equity and inclusion,” Republicans are waging war on libraries and museums, censoring books and displays that reflect the basic truth that the U.S. has always been a multi-ethnic society. Republicans are getting increasingly aggressive about spreading Christian nationalist lies that the U.S. was founded as a functional theocracy, when it was intended to be a secular nation.

The Superman gambit is the pop culture version of this. In one sense, it’s not as big of a deal as the Trump administration systematically removing Black historical figures from the public record. But it’s still deeply troubling, precisely because it’s an attack on a story that’s so fundamental to American culture. The right understands how crucial storytelling is to the way a society views itself. Superman’s origin story is as much a part of the American identity as Betsy Ross and Abraham Lincoln. Before most of us grow up and learn the more complex story of how the United States was built by waves of immigrants who often endured plenty of racist resistance, we were warmed up to the idea by learning that the Man of Steel is an immigrant who hid his true nature until he realized he needed to unveil it to be a force for good.

It is just a movie, but it’s also a story to instill values that still, despite all attempts to erase them, are part of the American myth, and myths matter.

I tried to be fair and compare this “woke” movie to a right-wing counterpart, and there have been several examples in recent years. I’ve actually seen Run Hide Fight, an example of conservative myth-building. This one reinforces those tales of “rugged individualism” with the story of a school taken over by a group of psychopathic students who are ultimately by a girl who has had gun training and isn’t afraid to gun down the bad guys. It’s…fine? Professionally made, but ultimately boring and about as realistic as Superman, and I don’t feel like shrieking that it’s heralding the downfall of America. It’s just a predictable power-fantasy, which to the right-wing means using that power to kill the bad people.

Another movie that I haven’t seen, but have seen enough clips and reviews that I think I can judge it, was Lady Ballers, a movie about male athletes triumphing by pretending to be trans so they compete against women’s teams. It’s another power fantasy, where they pretend that all men are physically superior to women so they can humiliate those women who play basketball.

Neither of those movies had the appeal of Superman. Maybe the right-wingers need to stop and assess and focus on whatever positive values they want to promote, rather than imagining their enemies, fellow Americans, caricatured and crushed. It’s going to be hard since they’ve already crossed out truth, justice, equality, fairness, and empathy from their list of goals, which makes any story they come up with un-compelling.

It’s like raaaain on your wedding day…

This is Brian Hooker, Ph.D., an anti-vaxxer who traveled to Texas during a measles outbreak to spread some anti-science propaganda. He’s best known as a promoter of the idea that vaccines cause autism. He was making a video with Ben Edwards, an anti-vax doctor working in the center of the Texas outbreak that killed three, who also contracted measles.

Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer of Children’s Health Defense, filmed an interview in west Texas in March with the parents of the six-year-old child who died from measles – the first measles death in the US in a decade.

The video promoted several dangerous myths about the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective at preventing measles, a virus that can be deadly and can cause lifelong harm.

Now for the non-ironic ironic part:

Hooker and Polly Tommey, an anti-vaccine film-maker with Children’s Health Defense, also interviewed other Mennonite families in west Texas. And they visited the medical office of Ben Edwards while patients and Edwards himself had symptomatic measles, they said.

Hooker then traveled home to Redding, California, and developed measles symptoms, he said.

Full disclosure, 18 days after visiting Seminole, Texas, sitting in a measles clinic and being exposed to Doctor Ben with the measles, I got the measles. So cool, Hooker said.

So he exposed himself to the measles in Texas, then, while he was maximally contagious, he flew across the country to California, exposing everyone he encountered to the disease.

But don’t worry, Ben Edwards also gave him the cure.

Edwards has become quite popular in the severely undervaccinated community in Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the explosive outbreak that began in late January and continues to grow steadily. Edwards set up a makeshift measles clinic in Gaines and provides unproven treatments, such as cod liver oil, the antibiotic clarithromycin, and the glucocorticoid budesonide, which is used to treat asthma and Crohn’s disease.

It would be very nice if these two quacks would drop dead of a preventable disease.

The perils of listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene

Oklahoma is deep in the heart of Tornado Alley — this is where weather forecasting is a matter of life or death. It’s also a place infested with militias and right-wing “patriots” who have fully embraced a belief in mysterious government-controlled weather control machines. You can imagine the conflicts that emerge when the state builds weather prediction gear, and you have groups of people who are convinced the gubmint is intentionally targeting civilians with deadly tornadoes. Those groups are trying to destroy weather radars and cell phone towers.

A man who, years ago, became convinced a child sex-trafficking ring was operating at an abandoned cement plant in Tucson has moved to Oklahoma and found a new target: radar systems he believes the military and media use to control the weather.

Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, who leads the anti-government group Veterans On Patrol, claimed credit for the July 6 sabotage of the weather radar system of KWTV-TV, Channel 9, in Oklahoma City. Meyer did not vandalize the station’s radar system himself, but had posted pleas on his group’s Telegram channel asking for others to join his cause.

Security footage posted by the television station showed a man tossing a bag over a chain-link fence, climbing it and damaging a power supply. The video then showed the man spray painting over the lens of a security camera.

You can see this idiot vandalizing the power supply for a weather radar.

The ringleader for this gang of vandals, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, has his own justification for the destruction.

“Eliminating directed energy weapons that are embedded in our infrastructure is not going to harm a single American,” he said. “It will take away a loaded weapon pointed at the American people.”

And of course he is a raving Christian Nationalist looney.

Last year, Meyer was part of an effort in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene for posing as an aid worker to encourage locals to tear down cell towers and attack the military.

“When the military plays God with the weather, they’re mocking our Heavenly Father by calling one of his most favorite instruments a ‘weather weapon,'” Meyer added.

Veterans on Patrol has their own page on the Southern Poverty Law Center. It’s not just weather forecasting that they hate!

Not only do we continue permitting the slaughter of our own Children in Abortion Sacrificial Centers…
Not only do we permit altering our Children’s DNA with Globalist Vaccinations that kill and sterilize…
Not only do we permit Government Agencies like CPS to abduct Children from their Parents…
Not only do we permit the Captivity, Rape, and Abuse of Migrant Children being trafficked by Catholic Charity Services…
We now permit Afghan Pedophiles to bring their Child Rape Victims for further Abuse on our own Soil…
Americans will reap horrible consequences for continuing to allow God’s Children to be defiled and abused.
I ask everyone to Pray for the Children… and I ask my Father to destroy this Nation for perpetuating evil equal to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Americans will not fight for these Children… May our Father in Heaven bring His Righteous Judgement upon this Satanic Nation claiming to be under Him
PREPARE YOUR FAMILIES.

Read that whole page. He has a long history of insane conspiracy theories and active destruction.

Here’s one odd thing: google Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer. There are lots of news stories about the guy being arrested, not showing up at court hearings, just generally running about sowing chaos. None of the arrests seem to have stuck! I found news of his arrest back in 2018, right up to 2025, yet journalists today are just calling him up and getting these insane comments. Meyer said his group was monitoring Oklahoma radars closely and claimed that there were no laws that could prevent them from destroying the radars. This is an open, vocal right-wing terrorist who is allowed to continue his rampage with no significant impairment of his ability to blow shit up. All I can think is that he’s very clever about getting idiotic dupes to do his dirty work for him, like the goober in that video.

Just in case you spot this sanctimonious nutcase in your neighborhood, here’s a photo.

Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer


‘

Lock him up!

How to make a seahorse

Seahorses are weird animals. They depart from the typical streamlined torpedo shape of your average fish to construct this unusual twisted shape with dermal armor, toothless jaws, and a dependence on fins for propulsion — they’re just weirdos all around. How did they get to be this way?

One suggestion is that it is an extreme example of paedomorphosis, as presented in this paper: An embryonic arrest shapes the Syngnathid body plan: Insights from Seahorses, Pipefishes, and their Relatives.

The Syngnathidae (seahorses, seadragons, pipefish, pipehorses) exhibit a remarkable, enigmatic body plan, challenging conventional explanations for their fused jaws, toothlessness, cartilaginous skeleton, fin loss, male pregnancy, and their distinctive morphology, which includes the acute head-trunk angle of seahorses and the family’s unique curling, often prehensile, tail. We propose a unifying, parsimonious hypothesis, termed “pharyngulation,” that the entire lineage originated from a profound paedomorphic arrest (retention of juvenile traits) during a specific embryonic pharyngula stage. This arrest, likely driven by ancestral Hox gene cluster disintegration, fundamentally halted morphological progression in a common teleost ancestor. This single event explains their entire suite of primary characteristics–including universal low body mass and volume and unique A-P locomotion. It also establishes a framework to differentiate these foundational family-defining traits from ancestral features shared with the broader Syngnathiformes order (such as the elongated snout, as exemplified by Trumpetfish) and from later adaptive refinements, such as the leaf-like appendages in seadragons. Our “pharyngulation” hypothesis offers a novel, testable model for macroevolutionary innovation, demonstrating how a singular, profound alteration to a conserved developmental program can rapidly forge a new, viable body plan. This concept, synthesizing evidence from genomics, the fossil record, and developmental biology, is of broad interest to evolutionary biologists and developmental biologists alike.

Unfortunately, this paper only presents a hypothesis — no methods, no experiments, no substantial comparative data. I’ll forgive that since it does introduce the term “pharyngulation” into the scientific literature.

I was provoked to dig a little deeper, and found this paper: A comparative analysis of the ontogeny of syngnathids (pipefishes and seahorses) reveals how heterochrony contributed to their diversification. It supports some of the ideas of the first paper — heterochrony is right there in the title — and also includes some beautiful photos of syngnathid embryos.

Segmentation and early organogenesis development in examined syngnathids. Nerophis ophidion (A-F), Syngnathus typhle (G-K), and Hippocampus erectus (L-Q), respectively. In this period, species-specific characteristics develop more clearly. Arrowheads: blue = hind brain vesicle, green = pigmentation, rufous = mandibular arch, orange = dorsal fin condensations, white = hypertrophic hindgut, black = fin fold. Scale is 500 μm; dpm = days post mating

That’s a stage close to what we’d call the pharyngula stage (which doesn’t have a single discrete marker), and they look familiar — they look like longer, skinnier, more slowly developing zebrafish embryos, where the 19 day syngnathid looks like a 19 hour zebrafish. We have to wait a week or more to see an embryo that is comparable to, but very different from, a 24-48 hour old zebrafish embryo.

Organogenesis to release development in examined syngnathids. Nerophis ophidion (A-D), Syngnathus typhle (E-I), and Hippocampus erectus (J-O), respectively. The last prerelease period is characterized by snout elongation, continued pigmentation and the conclusion of allometric fin outgrowth. Arrowheads: black = fin fold. Scale is 500 μm; dpm = days post mating

And that’s where I see the problem with the paedomorphosis explanation. This is not simply a case of developmental arrest. There are clear differences in growth prior to the pharyngula stage, and the pharyngula stage is, at best, a point of divergence in development, and so much of what is happening at that point and thereafter is the appearance of evolutionary novelties. It’s not so much that the pattern stops, as that there are a whole host of additions to the organization of the syngnathid body plan in embryogenesis.

Also, data is always pretty.