Sunday, August 23, 2015

Mistaking A Tiny Fraction of Self-Important People For The Entire Universe

I am warned that if I keep on the way I am,  being "totally unrealistic" that "no one is going to take you seriously about anything".

I don't know how reading what people said, believing they meant what they said instead of pretending that they meant the opposite came to mean being "totally unrealistic".   Back when I was in high school and they were trying to teach us how to write research papers, that was called "gathering information" which we were told was the only valid way to do expository writing.  What seems unrealistic to me is pretending that a scientist who is writing a book he intends to be regarded as science doesn't, actually, mean what the main thrust of the work says, especially since in other parts of the same book, in letters to his professional colleagues and others, he confirms what he really meant.  Not to mention that those who knew him, his contemporary colleagues, those whose work he, himself, cited as reliable science, his friends and families who did what no post-war revisionist ever did, talked to him, confirm what he said in his books as being his real and stated position.   What seems unrealistic to me is to take a single passage that is a complete contradiction of what he claimed as valid scientific conclusions as overturning the rest of his book, especially as, for the entire time he's issuing his escape clause, he is undermining what he says in it.

I don't know how taking the claimed methods and standards of science as being the only ones under which science is validly considered to be science is being "totally unrealistic".   If something gets to be called science as it violates those claimed methods and standards, then it is the claims that those are the actual methods and standards of science that are unrealistic because those can be abandonned and the results still get to be called "science" with all of the assumed rights and privilege of being considered reality and a basis for action.

As to "no one" taking me seriously, apparently in the context of the warning "no one" is that universe of atheists who may comprise as much as 3.5 % of the human population.  And I doubt it's all of the atheists, some of whom will not willfully ignore what I said but at least honestly consider it.  I could lose every single atheist and still have more than 95% of the human population that might take me seriously on things I might make sense about.  I'd rather take my chances with that 95% than with the entire population of atheists, especially those who insist on suppressing knowledge and reason in favor of their ideological line.  I am done buying ideological lines without fact checking and whenever they insist on lying and, most of all, covering up murders and oppression.  It's the greatest shame of my life that I ever bought the sob stories of the communists for even a minute, if I'd subjected them to the same skepticism I have capitalism, that would never have happened.

Politically, I've pointed out before, if liberals gave up all of the atheists who insist on being obnoxious to most people, especially the ones who insist on such insane ideas as driving all of religion out of public life, they would probably attract as many if not several times more people to either their side or who would consider the possibility of working in coalition with them but who won't do it while being insulted, ridiculed and harassed.

4 comments:

  1. Funny thing; whole lotta people at Salon pointing out Jeffrey Tayler is prone to screeds and making baseless accusations and generally writing crap about religion.

    Interesting to see, but what comments I've read there so far (they are always the barometer of these matters) indicates Tayler has few supporters for his latest diatribe.

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    1. It's one of the few encouraging things that I've noticed, a few atheists who are tired of that stuff and resent that jerks like Tayler present themselves and are presented as representing them. I might have to go back to differentiating between the ones who are and aren't assholes, again. I'd stopped because the ones who aren't so seldom objected to the ones who are. I hope that changes.

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    2. I think you should make that distinction. The arrogant loudmouths in the atheist population get most of the attention for the same reason the ugliest Christian fundamentalists get a disproportionate amount of press. And sensible Christians often get blamed for not speaking out against the Franklin Graham types. In reality they do, or alternatively they sigh and just go on trying to follow Christ, but either way the press ignores them.

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    3. I agree. I'm tired of blaming the many for the noise of the few, just as I'm tired of being blamed for not shutting down those noisy few who supposedly represent me.

      There are plenty of fools at the Tayler post by now, arguing that churches should be taxed because they make a profit, etc., etc., etc. Pure ignorance that imagines every church is rich and raking in millions in tax-free income. The same ignorance the same people despise when it's spouted by Donald Trump.

      Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?

      I leave them to their own devices. It is equally interesting how many voices now (the majority, at this Tayler post) are just fed up with the ranting and raving and the generalizing that passes for "discourse" on the internet. Tayler is a poor man's Sam Harris; all the bluster and even less knowledge of the subject (I didn't think that was possible). But even at Salon he's wearing out his welcome.

      People always surprise you; sometimes in good ways.

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