Ray Comfort says he loves PZ Meyers, but then he quotes me, without comprehension.
He also says I hate him. He’s wrong again. I despise his ignorance. And man, that’s a lot to despise.
I know you’re all tired of him, but NoelPlum99 is a sincere troll, so I’ll actually answer him, despite the fact that his sincerity is really just a side effect of self-absorption. So he asks in a video, where all the dissenters are (why in a video, I don’t understand; isn’t this a case where his written paragraphs are simpler, shorter, and easier to get through then 2+ minutes of yelling at a camera?)
PZ I ask you – given the footfall of Pharyngula; the contentious nature of the subjects in question; the substantial number of people who disagree with your position; the way in which you are regarded as a lead figure in many of these things; given all of this, is it really credible for you claim you don’t mind reasonable dissent when you appear, for all the world, to not have a single regular dissenter who has not been banned?
You may think I am a troll but please don’t mix up trolls with idiots. If you had a good couple of dozen REGULAR dissenting posters on these issues your arguments would look more convincing. In my couple of months before being banned I never encountered a single one. Not one. Nada. Zilch.
So where are these dissenters PZ? Is this just some incredible statistical freak of nature that you are the only person on earth with a substantial number of detractors but somehow none of them EVER bother to argue regukarlyon your blog, except the ones who are trolls????
Oh, yes. Why don’t I tolerate dissent, from a dissenter who posted here for over 4 months, making 168 comments. I have to say, this is a remarkably stupid question.
Why aren’t 50% of my commenters creationists, just like the American population? Why aren’t 90% of them Christians? Why aren’t a third of them Republicans? We can apply this to every site on the internet: why aren’t the comment threads at AVoiceForMen full of people aghast at the misogyny on display? Why aren’t 10% of the comments at RaptureReady people belittling the inanity of Bible prophecy? Perhaps NoelPlum99 ought to think it through a little bit, and wonder why he assumes that the internet ought to be a great gray panmictic uniformity.
But all right, I’ll just assume that he’s not very bright and explain the obvious. There are a number of reasons why you aren’t ever going to see mobs of angry dissenters here.
This is a self-selected community. Look at the header on the blog: liberals, atheists, science-minded people will congregate here. It’s a successful center for that kind of person, and that means that people with different views — well, those that have a speck of self-awareness — will know that they are going to be a tiny minority in a swarm of opinionated, outspoken, ferocious liberals. Venturing here will be daunting. The mirror of community is that there will also be self-selected avoidance.
I have commenting rules, linked to on the main page. It’s not just the community, but me: this is my party, and I am the bouncer. I keep on eye on things and disruptive intrusions will get shown the door. I hope it’s clear that this is not a completely open noise machine with no expectations or standards of behavior. Reasonable dissent is allowed, but the key word there is reasonable.
So why aren’t there a bunch of reasonable people here disagreeing with the major premises of the blog (there is, of course, a great deal of disagreeing going on in the comments — NoelPlum99 has to have his blinders on to fail to see that — but it’s just not over fundamentals, like the value of science)? Because they can’t disagree reasonably.
Part of the reason is that the culture here means people who have a minority view often charge in here with a chip on their shoulder, promoting confrontation for confrontation’s sake. They’re not here to have a conversation, or discuss issues philosophically; they’re here to assault the fortress, to do their best to piss everyone off. They want to disrupt rather than argue. And like any good bouncer at a party who sees the angry drunk blundering about interrupting conversations, I give them the boot.
Another reason is that when they aren’t aggressively abusive, these dissenters are often completely tone-deaf and unable to see beyond their own myopic little obsessions. Case in point: NoelPlum99. He wasn’t openly abusive; he didn’t charge in like another recently banned spammer who had the username “PZ MEYERS IS A FUCKING DOUCHEBAG”; he was just consistently narcissistic.
In this case, I posted my regrets that Natalie Reed was leaving FtB, and also pointed out something that NoelPlum99 ought to find ironic: that the trolls and abusers are driving someone out of their own space. Oh, no…the real problem, in NoelPlum99’s head, is that blogs have some expected range of behavior that might preclude the participation of assholes, but that those same resentful assholes might be actively trying to shut down entire blogs and blog networks? No, not an issue. No worries. Create an environment of such unremitting hostility that people can’t bear the pressure of posting on their own sites is OK, but how dare a blog ban NoelPlum99?
So NoelPlum99 got banned for a couple of things. One was the complete inappriateness of jumping into a thread regretting Natalie’s departure with the deep sentiment that he didn’t like her. Another was the complete lack of awareness of context: it’s all about him, everywhere. And finally, there was the absurdity of a guy complaining now about how we don’t allow dissent arguing at length in that thread (completely off topic) about how skeptics ought to be able to disallow certain topics, such as gender politics.
And there was another obvious reason why some dissenters get banned: they are obtuse and don’t listen. There are regular commenters here who are similarly obstinate, but at least this is their space and they have voluntarily joined up with a group sharing similar views. If you’re a dissenter, holding a minority view, there’s an expectation that you’re actually here because you’re looking to learn about a different point of view (although, as I said above, usually you’re here about confrontation for confrontation’s sake). You’re getting dogpiled; there are 20 people telling you you’re wrong. Then what happens, typically? You pick the worst possible argument (it’s true, sometimes people I agree with in general do make bad arguments), ignore all the reasonable arguments, and never ever listen. NoelPlum99 was notorious for that. He hung around for 4 months and never changed his tune, never addressed any sensible arguments, and never acknowledged any points that might represent serious concerns by commenters here.
Imagine a party where some boor keeps walking up to conversational groups, announcing his position on some sociopolitical point that may not have anything to do with what the conversation was about, and when the others actually try to engage him, he goes glassy-eyed, ignores them, and eventually wanders off to assert his great truths to a different group. That was NoelPlum99. That was not reasonable dissent.
One last remark: sometimes there is no such thing as reasonable dissent on certain issues. Sometimes trolls are idiots. NoelPlum99 lasted as long as he did because he didn’t come right out and shout some intolerable stupidity; I will, for instance, ban racists on sight, because their arguments are not in any way scientifically or ethically defensible, and in fact are simply odious and evil. NoelPlum99 was smugly privileged and dense, but there was some faint hope that he might actually wake up and recognize his own blinkered view, a hope that faded fairly rapidly.
But otherwise, there are views that I find insufferably stupid, that only idiots would hold, and I’m happy to make this environment as hostile as possible to them. There are no rational grounds, no context for reasonable dissent, for being anti-feminist, for instance, or denying that our culture is deeply patriarchal and sexist. I can see reasonable argument about how we ought to deal with this fact of life, but denial (or worse, the kind of inane argument so many make that “why, calling someone a ‘cunt’ is not a reflection of de facto sexism!”) is going to be fired upon with all ferocity and anyone holding such a view is going to find interacting here intolerable and infuriating, leading to them lashing out and trying to turn the whole blog into a brawl over some really idiotic issues.
And then they get banhammered.
Because really, how do you express “reasonable dissent” from the view that women are people, and that our society institutionalizes discrimination of all sorts?
The other day Paul Fidalgo asked permission to quote something I said on our super-secret backchannel (there is no backchannel, no, we do not talk to each other on FtB; it’s all a lie, pretend no one said anything about it), and I got the distinct impression that he was going to pick a fight with me over it. So I said yes, because I enjoy a good argument. Imagine my disappointment, though, because he ends up agreeing with me, mostly.
So now what do I do? I’m disarmed, I’m helpless, I’ve got nothing to lash out against. Now I’m very uncomfortable. What a devious move!
A certain philosopher who will not be named has taken exception to Fidalgo’s post (he’s “very angry”!), calling him a “bully enabler” who has “written a piece justifying bullying” which makes the “situation much worse”.
What? Telling people they should shut up and listen to other people’s arguments, especially when they have more experience in the subject than you do, is now “bullying”? That makes no sense at all. So now if someone yells at me that I’m totally wrong, and I sit back and think about it and listen to their case rather than instantly barking out a rebuttal, I am engaging in bullying?
I don’t get it. I really don’t.
I’m also baffled by what “the situation” might be. I fear the situation might be something as awful as someone sometime listening to that asshole Meyers again.
Wow, the things I have been missing. All that hateful email I’ve been getting over the years? Turns out that was the upper echelon of the scum. Put up a few videos, and you discover the youtube commentariat:
To use my “freedom of speech” (which PZ Meyers HATES more than the KKK hates black people):
EAT MY WHITE, STRAIGHT, CIS, NON-FEMINIST MALE COCK, BITCH! OR I WILL RAPE YOU!
C=======================3
I’m still kind of marveling at the sudden surge to the bottom of the canyons of dimbuggery I’m seeing.
There is a common line of attack Christians use in debates with atheists, and I genuinely detest it. It’s to ask the question, “where do your morals come from?” I detest it because it is not a sincere question at all — they don’t care about your answer, they’re just trying to get you to say that you do not accept the authority of a deity, so that they can then declare that you are an evil person because you do not derive your morals from the same source they do, and therefore you are amoral. It is, of course, false to declare that someone with a different morality than yours is amoral, but that doesn’t stop those sleazebags.
I was looking over the comments on my article at Salon, and realizing that we’re in a privileged position here. The kooks don’t last long in the searing heat of the Pharyngula comments section, so we only rarely see the woo peddlers confidently blithering away…but there they are, spouting inanities as if there are no fierce hunters of woo in the neighborhood. But we are watching. Some critics are responding intelligently over there, but they’re outnumbered, I think.
So here are a few excerpts for your amusement.
I brought up the subject out of curiosity because if Myers is a telepathy denier, then he is a shade dogmatic. My own experience has convinced me that telepathy happens, most often on the level of feelings, but sometimes including mental content. Unlike NDE’s, of course, nothing can be claimed to follow from this about survival after death.
Show me the evidence. “Feelings” are not evidence.
I’m not reporting a scientific experiment, just a belief – a conclusion – reached on the basis on personal experience. It’s not a belief I wouldn’t absolutely *never* give up, but it would take a lot to dislodge it.
Several people made comments like this: NDEs aren’t “science”, therefore you can’t disprove them with science. They’re complaining about me, though, not Beauregard, who’s trying to claim he has scientific evidence for the phenomenon. Why weren’t they telling Beauregard to get out of town in his original post?
Here’s another example of this double-standard.
I find it hilarious how up in arms you guys are getting about this. I never got the impression that Beauregard was making any definitive statements in either of his articles. He was writing about some things that may or may not have happened, and it is up to the reader to decide what they want to believe. The fact is, you don’t know, Dr. Myers. Don’t act like you do, because absolutely no one in the scientific world can explain NDE’s definitively.
Except Beauregard, apparently.
What hilarious nonsense, though: “He was writing about some things that may or may not have happened”. Right. Shall we just say they didn’t happen as he described and be done with it?
This person then goes on with a strange tirade about science.
I understand getting offended by something you consider pseudo-science, but your entire profession is based on theories that are constantly up for debate and can ALWAYS be proven wrong. I would like you to say something positive about this subject, because as of yet you have not made a single statement that confirms you have any interesting ideas about it. To brush aside so many people’s accounts of similar experiences AND the positive effects they have had on people’s lives is arrogant, and frankly pretty unscientific. There will always be, and should always be, things we can’t explain in this world. Deal with it.
I didn’t brush those experiences aside, of course. I explained them: NDEs are the product of psychological confabulation. I know, my answer doesn’t mention ghosts, though, so he rejects it.
You can trust him, though. He’s a scientist.
Dude, I have an M.S. in Biology from a well-respected university, where I studied under a University Fellowship. I do think I know what it means to be a scientist.
Heh. He has a Masters Degree…in Science!
I would be far more impressed with Myers’ overheated insistence on how scientific he is if he weren’t so keen to use such emotional and emotionally charged words and phrases such as “very silly article,” “feeble,” “some very, very strange beliefs,” “babbling piffle,” “nonsense,” and the like. Why does Myers care so very much that some people are open to the ideas that Beauregard espouses? Because he clearly cares a great deal. I’m sorry, I’m not buying the “I care because I’m a scientist!!” meme. He clearly has an emotional investment in people not believing that there could be life after death. His side of the aisle loves to use the argument that people WANT to believe that there is life after death, so that negates their entire argument. But if someone like him WANTS to believe that there isn’t, then that doesn’t disprove their position, nooooo, oh no. I find this rant disturbing, not scientific. I’m not in any position to evaluate the science of the original article, but if Meyers is so scientific, then he could have given his rebuttal in a cool and unemotional way instead of resorting to insults. Give me a break. My understanding is that scientists are openminded. Myers’ stance in this rebuttal clearly does not fit that very basic criterion. His mind is made up. I would wager that it wouldn’t matter what evidence was presented, he wouldn’t accept it.
Awww, tone troll is sad.
Myer’s should just blast holes in the research but he is ranting and raving like a lunatic. Editors at Salon- Can you get some qualified columnists to discuss these topics? I’d suggest Dean Radin for one side and someone other than biologist Myers on the other. Maybe a physicist?
Then follows several comments where they talk about how I ought to be replaced with a physicist. Of course, it must be a physicist who is sympathetic to magic.
But I don’t count. See, I’m just a biologist, not a neuroscientist.
Leaving aside the sarcasm and nonsequiturs in your “response”, how exactly are you qualified to evaluate the work of Beauregard? You state that you are a biologist, not a neuroscientist or psychologist. Are you an expert in life forms with or without brains?
Well, actually, I have a Ph.D. from the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon, but I’m not playing credential games. You just to be competent and aware of the basics of the scientific method to see that Beauregard was babbling bullshit.
Also, the references to some “primordial matrix” may seem odd at first, until you realize it sounds very similar to Jungian theory. And there are many things empirical science has still not been able to explain that are commonplace. We still do not know why women menstruate per the lunar cycle unlike other mammals, or why bumblebees can fly. Yet they do, and always have.
You had me laughing at Jung. But I have to correct you: women do not menstruate on the lunar cycle, and in fact the phase of the moon pretty much has nothing to do with reproductive physiology. We also know how bumblebees fly; google “clap and fling” for lots of links to the details of the aerodynamics.
Wouldn’t you know it, but someone has to trot out vibrations. It’s always vibrations and quantum with these weirdos.
Again, paranormal “events” and and realities exist in a frequency range beyond current measuring tools. Arguing that they should is silly and about as productive as the old joke about the guy looking for his keys under the lamp post.
Before radio and TV was invented, the frequencies for them existed. If you told someone like Myers in 1300 about them he would have burned you at the stake.
This rationalist-reductionist viewpoint is an archaic dinosaur. In 50 years people will look back and wonder at the cache of such a primitive, mundane world view.
Many of the materialists here are progressives politically but don’t realize in this debate you are the right wing.
You either get it or you don’t. And since its a karmic issue, no one is to blame.
What exactly is that frequency, Kenneth? Be specific. I can look up the electromagnetic spectrum as well as anyone (well, as anyone but you), and I don’t see the mysterious gap that we can’t measure.
I’m not a burny kind of guy, so you probably wouldn’t have to worry, even in 1300. But then as now, I’d ask you for your evidence for radio waves and psi waves or whatever silly stuff you’re going on about. Got any? Or are you just talking out of your ass? I can show you instruments that record radio waves and give us good reason to believe they are there. No one can do the same for your paranormal powers, so until you do, those beliefs should be rejected.
One last example, then I’m done. My karma is full up right now.
I understand what Meyers is saying but I was watching a PBS documentary on the sun. They explained why the sun doesn’t burn out and why it doesn’t fly apart. I just want to know how they know that for a fact.
Complex answer: the sun is a massive nuclear fusion engine. Gravity compresses the core causing the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium, which generates energy and heat, which causes the expansion of the star. These forces of compression and expansion are currently in balance. (Yes, I know, stellar nucleosynthesis is more complicated than that.)
Simple answer: Look up during the day. There’s the sun. It’s still burning, and it hasn’t flown apart. You can tell by looking at it.
But what do I know? I’m just a biologist.
Oh, dear. The Way of the Master is after “PZ Meyers and his limited vocabulary”. They caught me at the Reason Rally, and I dismissed Sye Ten Bruggencate with a laugh and called him a “slimy motherfucker”. The segment of interest begins at about 9:30.
What they don’t tell you is that I’d been strolling about the rally all morning, and this was the fourth time Sye Ten Bruggencate or Eric Hovind had come up to me with their inane presuppositionalist argument…the same dim argument that they always make (you may notice that at one point, I say “…like I said…” — I was referring to previous encounters with these jerks). And what was that argument?
Well, you may recall that there was a zombie invasion a while back, in which a mob of Hovind acolytes suddenly showed up en masse and started babbling repetitively. You can find the totality of their reasoning on that thread.
I can summarize their argument very briefly:
Your ability to reason comes from god.
Therefore, if you use reason, you prove the existence of god.
If you use reason to disprove god, you actually prove god.
If you claim any of their arguments are logically fallacious, you are using reason, which comes from god, therefore you prove them correct.
Demanding evidence for a claim presupposes that you should support claims with evidence; they make no such requirements, therefore they are exempt from providing evidence for their god.
This god just happens to be the god of the talking snake and the guy who was nailed to a big stick.
They know this for certain because god told them he was god.
That’s the totality of their argument. It just goes around and around and around; it’s like getting trapped on a merry-go-round with a ranting, defective, and very limited Eliza program…one written in an old and very slow BASIC interpreter, by a very lazy programmer who only coded it with about ten phrases that are cued semi-randomly.
Ray Comfort thinks Sye Ten Bruggencate is brilliant. Enough said.
I am grading the first exam of my first year introductory biology course. The first question on the first exam is always a gimme, just to ease them in and lighten the mood a little. Here’s that first question:
The correct spelling of PZ Myers’ last name is
A. Meyers
B. Meier
C. Myers
D. Mayr
12% of the class answered “A”.
<sigh> I shall carry on with the rest of the exam. I hope the students don’t mind that I return them spattered with my tears.
There’s a youtuber who goes by the name “the amazing atheist” who I’ve never cared much for — he’s a raving MRA who ought to change his name to “the asinine atheist” — who has just flamed out on reddit in a revealing long angry thread. I don’t recommend it. It’s very ugly. The only virtue is that this already marginal hater on the fringes of atheism just made himself even less relevant, and we can all wash our hands of him now.
I’ll put a few highlights from his rants below the fold; these aren’t really surprising, since this kind of thing has always been part of his youtube schtick, but you might want to brace yourself for the virulence. He really, really hates uppity feminist women, and he finds threats of rape to be an appropriate response to them. This whole affair was prompted by a poster on reddit going by the nickname “ICumWhenIKillMen”, which I find reprehensible too, but it in no way justifies the eruption of even greater hatred that this “amazing” atheist (going by the name terroja or TJ) spouts.
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.]
