Of your dopiness I've had my fill,
You're nothing if you're not a pill,
Your buddies as well,
Can all go to hell
You're, all of you, poissons d'avril
Hate Mail
They want an answer they can come here to get one. I haven't posted a comment at Eschaton since June 2012. Skeptic Tank, Freki, Tunder Boy... don't come here much because when they did I kicked their asses. I kicked S.T's over at RD the past couple of days. He was reduced to goal post moving and distraction because he's got nuttin'. Their Eschaton buddy, Dopey is too stupid to stay away. Dunc Black and his seven(teen) Douch-offs, Dopey, Stupy, Liey, Numby,....
Update: Critics, Bah!
Don’t listen to those people. It’s rubbish. Write it off. Critics have given me too much bad advice in the past. I remember Kenneth Tynan demolishing The Blood Knot in London. Today Tynan is in his grave and The Blood Knot isn’t. I was once told that my play is too specifically written for a South African audience, and that I should write in a more universal sense ... for an English-speaking audience ... can you believe advice like that? Thank God I’ve read my Tolstoy and my William Faulkner to know that by virtue of their regionalism they became universal. I have never benefited from a critic’s advice ... they see themselves as performers at the expense of your work. If you want advice, go stand at the back of the theatre during a performance of your play and watch the audience. They’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t. If I was ever to be a critic ... just for a few months, then I would open every review with this line: “This is one man’s opinion, it is not the truth!” Athol Fugard
Update: Critics, Bah!
Don’t listen to those people. It’s rubbish. Write it off. Critics have given me too much bad advice in the past. I remember Kenneth Tynan demolishing The Blood Knot in London. Today Tynan is in his grave and The Blood Knot isn’t. I was once told that my play is too specifically written for a South African audience, and that I should write in a more universal sense ... for an English-speaking audience ... can you believe advice like that? Thank God I’ve read my Tolstoy and my William Faulkner to know that by virtue of their regionalism they became universal. I have never benefited from a critic’s advice ... they see themselves as performers at the expense of your work. If you want advice, go stand at the back of the theatre during a performance of your play and watch the audience. They’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t. If I was ever to be a critic ... just for a few months, then I would open every review with this line: “This is one man’s opinion, it is not the truth!” Athol Fugard
Um, Ever Hear of, you know, those little things called Atomic and Nuclear Bombs? Atheists Have Got To Be The Stupidest Of People
Avatar
Adam Hominem--colossal putz Doug, lazy Dervish • 14 hours ago
Name just one weapon of modern war not invented by Xtians.
Yeah, that's from Duncan Black's self-defined "brain trust" in response to one of dopey's clip and paste jobs from here. Of course none of Duncan's dolts read what I actually wrote. Since the hate mail sent to me from there earlier in the day contained the practically daily implication (when it's not blatantly asserted as a "fact") that science was the exclusive property of atheists, something which is repeated there more often than Christians recite the creed, it's pretty mind blowingly stupid of them to assert this later in the very same day. At least one of the participants in the snippet of thread the above quote comes from was involved in the earlier one, today. She didn't point out the irony of the claim.
Adam Hominem--colossal putz Doug, lazy Dervish • 14 hours ago
Name just one weapon of modern war not invented by Xtians.
Yeah, that's from Duncan Black's self-defined "brain trust" in response to one of dopey's clip and paste jobs from here. Of course none of Duncan's dolts read what I actually wrote. Since the hate mail sent to me from there earlier in the day contained the practically daily implication (when it's not blatantly asserted as a "fact") that science was the exclusive property of atheists, something which is repeated there more often than Christians recite the creed, it's pretty mind blowingly stupid of them to assert this later in the very same day. At least one of the participants in the snippet of thread the above quote comes from was involved in the earlier one, today. She didn't point out the irony of the claim.
Or as the great Marilynne Robinson said in her take down of Richard Dawkins' God Delusion:
The gravest questions about the institutions of contemporary science seem never to be posed, though we know the terrors of all-out conflict between civilizations would include innovations, notably those dread weapons of mass destruction, being made by scientists for any country with access to their skills. Granting for the purposes of argument that Dawkins is correct in the view that the majority of great scientists are atheists, we may then exclude religion from among the factors that recruit them to this somber work. We are left with nationalism, steady employment, good pay, the chance to do research that is lavishly funded and, by definition, cutting edge — familiar motives of a kind fully capable of disarming moral doubt. In any case, the crankiest imam, the oiliest televangelist, can, at his worst, only urge circumstances a degree or two farther toward the use of those exotic war technologies that are always ready, always waiting. If it is fair to speak globally of religion, it is also fair to speak globally of science.
I think the past four decades of atheist promotion, from CSICOP and its sTARBABY scandal to the blather on the blogs today prove that it is an ideology for TV trained dolts with no knowledge of even the most basic of even recent history or intellectual culture.
I was going to ignore the stuff that gets sent to me from there but this one was just so massively stupid I had to comment. Contemporary atheism has the integrity of fog in a hurricane.
Friday, March 31, 2017
Hate Mail - "Freki said...."
I can't be bothered to worry about what that liar says. She's a jerk. Anyone who takes her seriously is a fool.
Update: Thunder Boy, well I can't say he's any stupider than the Brit twit but he's stupid enough. Who cares.
It would seem that Duncan's flurry of writing is over, he can't even be bothered to write for his own blog because he knows none of them are going to read it. Eschaton is a blog for people who can't read or think.
Update: Thunder Boy, well I can't say he's any stupider than the Brit twit but he's stupid enough. Who cares.
It would seem that Duncan's flurry of writing is over, he can't even be bothered to write for his own blog because he knows none of them are going to read it. Eschaton is a blog for people who can't read or think.
The Only Thing Mike Pence Has Ever Done For Women
Mike Pence NOT having lunch with any woman other than his wife would count as one of the very, very rare things he's done for women in his public career. I can't imagine any woman would want to sit at a table with him. The cheapskate would probably stiff her with the check and expect her to do the cleaning up, too.
Really, would any rational woman want to sit down with someone who wanted to make it a law that they had to have a probe shoved up their vagina, not once but twice? I can't imagine being able to enjoy the meal, knowing that.
How Atheism Poisons Liberalism
I have been having some blog brawls at the ironically named "Religion Dispatches". One I'm currently having with an idiot, alleged science PhD who is so brilliant as to name himself "Skeptic Tank" (what is it with those Eschaton-based, atheist sci-trolls and their identification with feces?) who has been moving goal posts faster than a geezer of his age should attempt. The issue is the status of liberal Christianity, today. He started by ridiculing out of ignorance.
Do you remember when liberal Christians were relevant? Me neither.
Which is easy enough to counter, considering that every single piece of liberal legislation passed in Congress, in every single state legislature and even in almost all cases, liberal statutes on the local level would have depended, absolutely on the support and work of liberal Christians. I mentioned the high water marks of American liberalism, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Right Act to the doctored dolt, which would never have gone anywhere without the efforts of the Black Church members and others who put their lives, repeatedly, on the line. Not to mention every bit of 19th century reform, abolition, extension of the vote, etc. I also mentioned the second most liberal president in our history, Franklin Roosevelt who famously answered an inquiry into his ideology, "I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all".
Apparently his sci-track education didn't include much in the way of basic rhetoric or history or anything that would have included the information that having a PhD in science didn't grant him an indulgence making his ignorance an adequate replacement for knowing what he was talking about.
Among his demands were.
Name the liberal Christians who matter.
The starting list I gave included:
Methodists such a Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton and Debbie Stabenow Baptists like Kamala Harris, Lutherans such as Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, Congregationalists such as Amy Klobuchar Catholics such as Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Jack Reed....
That was in answer to "Skeptic Tank's" list of "Bernie Sanders". I don't know if Senator Sanders would agree with his constituting such a list of one, so I note him being so .... um..... "honored" only for the sake of this argument.
I gave other information as demanded by the atheist blog rats who infest the ironically named "Religion Dispatches" like Putin rent-boy trolls. The atheists, as I have found they generally do, had nuthin'..
Atheists have had nuthin' for a long, long time. I mentioned that even such atheists as, perhaps, Bernie Sanders and Barney Frank, if such they are, were smart enough to understand that their presence in the House and Senate depended on the votes of liberal Christians since there simply are not enough liberal atheists to elect them. They also knew that anything that alienated Christians who would potentially support their election was not only massively stupid, it was a guarantee of futility. That is something I've been pointing out to enraged atheist brats since 2006 and the idea doesn't seem to make much of a dent in their bratty arrogance, that's more important to them than moving any kind of liberal progress in the United States.
That preference for their counter-productive venting and ridicule over making liberal progress is, I contend, the definition of the effect of atheism on American liberalism, especially since the mid-1960s. Before that the damage atheism inflicted on American liberalism was largely through Marxists attaching themselves to liberalism like parasites that kill their host. None of which was either a legitimate aspect of American liberalism or helpful. The only effect such actions have ever had was in diminishing the political effectiveness of liberalism, distracting liberals from their legitimate agendas, duping liberals into supporting the elevation of lies and pornography as the most clueless of icons of freedom - they both destroy freedom and human dignity - and into permitting and agreeing to the line of Supreme Court rulings in which the corporate fascists have used to lie us into the Trump-Ryan fascism we have, today.
In virtually every case, when you see the influence of that strain of ideological atheism at work on the American left, the results have been damaging to liberalism, diminished the power of liberals, defeated our agenda and undermined it through attacks on the moral foundations that all liberalism depends on. The falsification of history, the replacement of lies for fact, taking advantage of the ignorance of most Americans about what has worked and what has not, playing on the sympathies of liberals through phony melodramatic show biz crap, have been a big part of that effort.
Atheism carries no defining moral content that liberalism requires to make a case for its validity and to counter the selfishness that is the basis of those things liberalism exists to counter. It carries no absolute moral obligation to respect the rights of other people, to be rigorous in the respect for those rights, or even admitting that any rights you wish to brush aside exist. Atheism doesn't carry any moral content that identifies lies as wrong. Atheism doesn't even carry a requirement that an atheist tells the truth that they are an atheist.
I noted that, in response to another atheist troll at "Religion Dispatches" that there was no defining stand in atheism that would identify anything that Trump or Ryan or Putin or Stalin or Hitler, for that matter, as being wrong or immoral. Any moral stand that any atheist took, one opposing that list of anti-liberals or, for that matter, any alleged moral stand that supported them, would have to come from somewhere other than atheism. Atheism is morally nihilistic. I also noted that if an atheist came up with an assertion that equality and justice were moral absolutes, their greatest opponents wouldn't be Christians or Jews or Muslims they would be their fellow atheists. I've seen such discussions online, I've noted that the nuclear physicist held up to be an atheist expert in what makes people do bad things, Steven Weinberg, has pretty much stated that other than his feelings of loyalty to his family and his university department, he didn't feel he had any moral obligations in the world to anyone.
Atheism has been a catastrophe for liberalism far more than the vulgar materialism of what conservatism means in the United States now. When your ideological position includes shafting the poor, cheating the vulnerable, using the alien among us as a means of whipping up paranoia to gain power, destroying the very environmental basis of life continuing, you will find your opponents in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in virtually all religions. You won't find any real opposition to that in atheism because there is none there to be found. Any atheist who asserts any moral position has to leave atheism to do that. Any atheist politician who ever proposed a liberal law or policy had to, as well.
Do you remember when liberal Christians were relevant? Me neither.
Which is easy enough to counter, considering that every single piece of liberal legislation passed in Congress, in every single state legislature and even in almost all cases, liberal statutes on the local level would have depended, absolutely on the support and work of liberal Christians. I mentioned the high water marks of American liberalism, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Right Act to the doctored dolt, which would never have gone anywhere without the efforts of the Black Church members and others who put their lives, repeatedly, on the line. Not to mention every bit of 19th century reform, abolition, extension of the vote, etc. I also mentioned the second most liberal president in our history, Franklin Roosevelt who famously answered an inquiry into his ideology, "I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all".
Apparently his sci-track education didn't include much in the way of basic rhetoric or history or anything that would have included the information that having a PhD in science didn't grant him an indulgence making his ignorance an adequate replacement for knowing what he was talking about.
Among his demands were.
Name the liberal Christians who matter.
The starting list I gave included:
Methodists such a Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton and Debbie Stabenow Baptists like Kamala Harris, Lutherans such as Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, Congregationalists such as Amy Klobuchar Catholics such as Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Jack Reed....
That was in answer to "Skeptic Tank's" list of "Bernie Sanders". I don't know if Senator Sanders would agree with his constituting such a list of one, so I note him being so .... um..... "honored" only for the sake of this argument.
I gave other information as demanded by the atheist blog rats who infest the ironically named "Religion Dispatches" like Putin rent-boy trolls. The atheists, as I have found they generally do, had nuthin'..
Atheists have had nuthin' for a long, long time. I mentioned that even such atheists as, perhaps, Bernie Sanders and Barney Frank, if such they are, were smart enough to understand that their presence in the House and Senate depended on the votes of liberal Christians since there simply are not enough liberal atheists to elect them. They also knew that anything that alienated Christians who would potentially support their election was not only massively stupid, it was a guarantee of futility. That is something I've been pointing out to enraged atheist brats since 2006 and the idea doesn't seem to make much of a dent in their bratty arrogance, that's more important to them than moving any kind of liberal progress in the United States.
That preference for their counter-productive venting and ridicule over making liberal progress is, I contend, the definition of the effect of atheism on American liberalism, especially since the mid-1960s. Before that the damage atheism inflicted on American liberalism was largely through Marxists attaching themselves to liberalism like parasites that kill their host. None of which was either a legitimate aspect of American liberalism or helpful. The only effect such actions have ever had was in diminishing the political effectiveness of liberalism, distracting liberals from their legitimate agendas, duping liberals into supporting the elevation of lies and pornography as the most clueless of icons of freedom - they both destroy freedom and human dignity - and into permitting and agreeing to the line of Supreme Court rulings in which the corporate fascists have used to lie us into the Trump-Ryan fascism we have, today.
In virtually every case, when you see the influence of that strain of ideological atheism at work on the American left, the results have been damaging to liberalism, diminished the power of liberals, defeated our agenda and undermined it through attacks on the moral foundations that all liberalism depends on. The falsification of history, the replacement of lies for fact, taking advantage of the ignorance of most Americans about what has worked and what has not, playing on the sympathies of liberals through phony melodramatic show biz crap, have been a big part of that effort.
Atheism carries no defining moral content that liberalism requires to make a case for its validity and to counter the selfishness that is the basis of those things liberalism exists to counter. It carries no absolute moral obligation to respect the rights of other people, to be rigorous in the respect for those rights, or even admitting that any rights you wish to brush aside exist. Atheism doesn't carry any moral content that identifies lies as wrong. Atheism doesn't even carry a requirement that an atheist tells the truth that they are an atheist.
I noted that, in response to another atheist troll at "Religion Dispatches" that there was no defining stand in atheism that would identify anything that Trump or Ryan or Putin or Stalin or Hitler, for that matter, as being wrong or immoral. Any moral stand that any atheist took, one opposing that list of anti-liberals or, for that matter, any alleged moral stand that supported them, would have to come from somewhere other than atheism. Atheism is morally nihilistic. I also noted that if an atheist came up with an assertion that equality and justice were moral absolutes, their greatest opponents wouldn't be Christians or Jews or Muslims they would be their fellow atheists. I've seen such discussions online, I've noted that the nuclear physicist held up to be an atheist expert in what makes people do bad things, Steven Weinberg, has pretty much stated that other than his feelings of loyalty to his family and his university department, he didn't feel he had any moral obligations in the world to anyone.
Atheism has been a catastrophe for liberalism far more than the vulgar materialism of what conservatism means in the United States now. When your ideological position includes shafting the poor, cheating the vulnerable, using the alien among us as a means of whipping up paranoia to gain power, destroying the very environmental basis of life continuing, you will find your opponents in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in virtually all religions. You won't find any real opposition to that in atheism because there is none there to be found. Any atheist who asserts any moral position has to leave atheism to do that. Any atheist politician who ever proposed a liberal law or policy had to, as well.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Walter Gerwig plays Pietro Paolo Melii da Reggio Capriccio Cromatico
I used to have an LP this was on, I remember thinking at the time that Gerwig was one of the most convincing lute players around. Then came the later generation (such as the very fine player, Paul O'Dette) who had some other ideas. Listening to it for the first time in several decades, it still strikes me as pretty good. It was as close as we were going to get in the early 70s.
Tablature
I believe it's the tablature (beginning on page 48 of the pdf) for this piece, though I haven't checked it by retuning my guitar and trying it out. If I get around to trying it out I'll revise.
Objectivity Is A Myth
The assertions from atheists that I answered yesterday occupied a lot of my free time yesterday. For an ideological bunch who rail endlessly against "Cartesian dualism" they are mighty hell-bent on dividing things into dualisms, the one on display in the comments that motivated my post some of the most cherished delusions of atheists, today.
Atheists love to claim "reason, logic, science, objectivity" etc and ascribe what they assert are the opposites of those, mostly dealing with emotion, irrationality, subjectivity, superstition and subjectivity, to non-atheists. Their methods of doing that are the same methods anyone who wants to set up a self-serving, dishonest dualism will use to do that, depending on superficial, ignorant, paranoid and dishonest narratives designed to serve their ends - the opposite of their self-asserted, self-serving "objectivity".
As can be heard in the "Bar Theology" discussion posted above, religious figures are far more likely to encounter the contradictions of such dualist conveniences than you are likely to hear atheists admit to.
I think anyone who wants to divide human minds and humanity in such a way is best suspected of having dishonest motives. I doubt there is such a thing as "objectivity" or "reason" or even "logic" which can be distilled, sublimated, crystallized, etc. from the rest of the contents of the same minds that emote, narrate, twist facts, etc. in service to the desires of those minds. The crude and far from perfect methods of doing formally and socially that in formal science are certainly not very effective in all but the rarest of cases. As always, I would recommend you look at Retraction Watch and other watchdog groups that track the lapses of those methods within successfully published and asserted, cited and quoted science. If they can't even do a better job of doing that within science, with all its safeguards, atheists who turn science into scientism are sure as hell not going to do it in their ideological assertions. The social sciences, by the way, probably the least successful in following the idealized methods of science, are full to the top of such lapses, inserting ideological desires within the formal literature of their fields. I am coming to believe that even biology has a real problem with that as, obviously, do cosmology, neuro-cognitive science. I think those three, these days, are largely governed by such ideological motivation.
If scientists want to get away from that, they'd better consider the fact that they and their colleagues, in their professional work, are as fully human as theologians or artists and they are continually giving in to their own ideological and professional desires as anyone.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
What defining moral stand of atheism has Trump violated? Excerpts From A Blog Brawl
In an exchange with an atheist at another website, I got these claims made to me.
Actually I think the problem is that Liberals, whether religious or non-religious believe that emotions, which is what moral opinions are, should be left out of political decisions. Decisions should be based upon facts, logic, rational thinking! Unfortunately that leaves their campaigns (Clinton was a good example) lacking any fire or spirit. People are moved by emotions not rationality or logic!
So much to unpack in that assertion. I should have led with my afterthought in the discussion so I will lead with that:
"Decisions should be based upon facts, logic, rational thinking!"
Uh, like it or not, that's a statement of moral opinion. By your own assertion, your moral position is self-contradicting.
And my first and longer response.
"emotions, which is what moral opinions are"
Oh, where do you get that idea? Do you mean that morality is based on what you want or want to be true? That's rather curious considering the assertions of moral obligations that are definitely contrary to what is wanted, often by those who assert those moral obligations as much as those who they are asserting them to. Do unto others that which you would have done unto you is certainly not how most people generally want to have things, they want to be able to do to others what they would not want to be done to them. As to other moral obligations such as to do justice to people you would not care about or like, or even to your enemies would certainly be the opposite of what their emotions would lead them to.
What makes you think that morals aren't exercised on the basis of fact, logic and rational thinking? That seems to me to be a totally absurd idea, an illegitimate classification and absurdly reductionist, something I have often seen done by atheists out of nothing so much as their emotional need to reduce and classify things so as to make them favor what they want.
Another, one of the biggest atheist trolls at Religion Dispatches got into it, most of what he said was stupid but he did give me something to respond to as well.
Christians try to force their morality on the rest of us. They want Christianity to be accepted by the nation as the ultimate morality. We see Christians and what they do, so we don't buy it.
The answer:
Let's see what that assertion could be applied to:
Democrats try to force their morality on Republicans,
Egalitarians try to force their morality on the promoters of privilege.
The supporters of women's' suffrage try to force their morality on anti-suffragists.
Civil Rights agitators try to force their morality on segregationists.
Those who assert the rights of Native Americans try to force their morality on people who want to kill them and steal their land.....
Atheists try to force their morality on Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc.
In short, you've got nuthin'.
This question seems to have stumped him for how:
What defining moral stand of atheism has Trump violated?
Actually I think the problem is that Liberals, whether religious or non-religious believe that emotions, which is what moral opinions are, should be left out of political decisions. Decisions should be based upon facts, logic, rational thinking! Unfortunately that leaves their campaigns (Clinton was a good example) lacking any fire or spirit. People are moved by emotions not rationality or logic!
So much to unpack in that assertion. I should have led with my afterthought in the discussion so I will lead with that:
"Decisions should be based upon facts, logic, rational thinking!"
Uh, like it or not, that's a statement of moral opinion. By your own assertion, your moral position is self-contradicting.
And my first and longer response.
"emotions, which is what moral opinions are"
Oh, where do you get that idea? Do you mean that morality is based on what you want or want to be true? That's rather curious considering the assertions of moral obligations that are definitely contrary to what is wanted, often by those who assert those moral obligations as much as those who they are asserting them to. Do unto others that which you would have done unto you is certainly not how most people generally want to have things, they want to be able to do to others what they would not want to be done to them. As to other moral obligations such as to do justice to people you would not care about or like, or even to your enemies would certainly be the opposite of what their emotions would lead them to.
What makes you think that morals aren't exercised on the basis of fact, logic and rational thinking? That seems to me to be a totally absurd idea, an illegitimate classification and absurdly reductionist, something I have often seen done by atheists out of nothing so much as their emotional need to reduce and classify things so as to make them favor what they want.
Another, one of the biggest atheist trolls at Religion Dispatches got into it, most of what he said was stupid but he did give me something to respond to as well.
Christians try to force their morality on the rest of us. They want Christianity to be accepted by the nation as the ultimate morality. We see Christians and what they do, so we don't buy it.
The answer:
Let's see what that assertion could be applied to:
Democrats try to force their morality on Republicans,
Egalitarians try to force their morality on the promoters of privilege.
The supporters of women's' suffrage try to force their morality on anti-suffragists.
Civil Rights agitators try to force their morality on segregationists.
Those who assert the rights of Native Americans try to force their morality on people who want to kill them and steal their land.....
Atheists try to force their morality on Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc.
In short, you've got nuthin'.
This question seems to have stumped him for how:
What defining moral stand of atheism has Trump violated?
The First Amendment As A Permission For Terrorists and Fascists
James Jackson, the 28-year-old coward, white-supremacist, American-made neo-fascist who murdered a 68-year-old man with a sword as a "practice run" for killing other black men, is another of a growing list of warnings that allowing neo-Nazis, white-supremacists, and other bigots who have flourished and recruited online to proselytize is a danger to us all. The various news pieces trying to figure out when and how a kid who went to a Quaker school and who went through the Army came out a neo-Nazi terrorist, cowardly killer of an elderly black man have noted that his online life gave him ample material to feed his pathology. Online videos,
But in the months before the attack, Jackson’s internet use suggested recent radicalization by the alt-right. Jackson’s YouTube page, where he had previously listened to the Final Fantasy soundtrack and liked a British royal family video, lit up with likes on videos about white superiority and “black on white crimes”.
The Daily Beast verified the YouTube account’s username as being associated with Jackson’s email address he listed on a résumé posted to his LinkedIn profile.
Jackson liked a livestream video called “Is It Time for Whites to Start Voicing Their Displeasure With Black on White Crimes?” two months before the attack. The two-hour video characterized African Americans as violent, and featured musical interludes of Donald Trump speeches set to electronic music.
“How many of you have got to the point where you’re more guiltless about your racism, or better yet your prejudice?” the livestreamer asked as viewers typed racial slurs in the comments.
Jackson also recently liked the videos “Blacks Know That Blacks Are Violent So Why Does the White Media Pretend They Are Not?” and “BLACK PERSON TALKS ABOUT ALT-RIGHT DESTROYED | MGTOW RED PILL SEXY TEEN CRINGE” and “Why I’m Quitting Porn & How to Achieve Any Goal & Cut Out Bad Behaviors.”
Jackson also subscribed to a series of racist channels including that of the National Policy Institute, a white-supremacist group founded by Richard Spencer. Another subscribed channel uploaded videos denying the Holocaust and claiming there are IQ differences between races. Videos in several other subscribed channels included “I Want a Fascist Ethnostate for Christmas” and uploaded broadcasts from Nazi website Stormfront.org and ex-Klansman David Duke. He also subscribed to the White House YouTube channel.
I would say that what James Jackson claims about his motives are probably not worth taking as honest without that kind of verification. He would seem to have already told a number of lies.
This is evidence of something I've long suspected, that video-movie propaganda has far more power to entice and entrap the most vulnerable than far less conveniently and easily consumed text-based hate material. Especially those not prone to have the discipline to read something, so lots of people in our TV trained age. But print-based hate, such as William L. Pierce's Turner Diaries have a proven effect in motivating terrorists. Timothy McVeigh and Dylan Roof, as well as others either explicitly modeled their terror on that book or they were inspired by it. But there isn't any reason to ignore the dangers that either of them pose.
It also forces the question of why, when it is obviously a contributing factor in terrorism such stuff is given protected status by the United States Constitution.
What is probably even less known here is that America joins the Putin regime as a source for neo-Nazi, neo-fascist terrorists and murderers elsewhere. Here is a map of some American-fascist inspired violence in Europe.
The article at the SPLC in which this map was published is well worth reading. It goes into a lot of detail about specific people who use neo-Nazi, neo-fascist material and groups, legally allowed in the United States. Read the many links that go with it, too.
That such American-inspired neo-fascism is influential in right-wing Britain and Europe is demonstrated. Here's a picture with the crypto-fascist Nigel Farage with one of his Brexit buddies,
But in the months before the attack, Jackson’s internet use suggested recent radicalization by the alt-right. Jackson’s YouTube page, where he had previously listened to the Final Fantasy soundtrack and liked a British royal family video, lit up with likes on videos about white superiority and “black on white crimes”.
The Daily Beast verified the YouTube account’s username as being associated with Jackson’s email address he listed on a résumé posted to his LinkedIn profile.
Jackson liked a livestream video called “Is It Time for Whites to Start Voicing Their Displeasure With Black on White Crimes?” two months before the attack. The two-hour video characterized African Americans as violent, and featured musical interludes of Donald Trump speeches set to electronic music.
“How many of you have got to the point where you’re more guiltless about your racism, or better yet your prejudice?” the livestreamer asked as viewers typed racial slurs in the comments.
Jackson also recently liked the videos “Blacks Know That Blacks Are Violent So Why Does the White Media Pretend They Are Not?” and “BLACK PERSON TALKS ABOUT ALT-RIGHT DESTROYED | MGTOW RED PILL SEXY TEEN CRINGE” and “Why I’m Quitting Porn & How to Achieve Any Goal & Cut Out Bad Behaviors.”
Jackson also subscribed to a series of racist channels including that of the National Policy Institute, a white-supremacist group founded by Richard Spencer. Another subscribed channel uploaded videos denying the Holocaust and claiming there are IQ differences between races. Videos in several other subscribed channels included “I Want a Fascist Ethnostate for Christmas” and uploaded broadcasts from Nazi website Stormfront.org and ex-Klansman David Duke. He also subscribed to the White House YouTube channel.
I would say that what James Jackson claims about his motives are probably not worth taking as honest without that kind of verification. He would seem to have already told a number of lies.
This is evidence of something I've long suspected, that video-movie propaganda has far more power to entice and entrap the most vulnerable than far less conveniently and easily consumed text-based hate material. Especially those not prone to have the discipline to read something, so lots of people in our TV trained age. But print-based hate, such as William L. Pierce's Turner Diaries have a proven effect in motivating terrorists. Timothy McVeigh and Dylan Roof, as well as others either explicitly modeled their terror on that book or they were inspired by it. But there isn't any reason to ignore the dangers that either of them pose.
It also forces the question of why, when it is obviously a contributing factor in terrorism such stuff is given protected status by the United States Constitution.
What is probably even less known here is that America joins the Putin regime as a source for neo-Nazi, neo-fascist terrorists and murderers elsewhere. Here is a map of some American-fascist inspired violence in Europe.
The article at the SPLC in which this map was published is well worth reading. It goes into a lot of detail about specific people who use neo-Nazi, neo-fascist material and groups, legally allowed in the United States. Read the many links that go with it, too.
That such American-inspired neo-fascism is influential in right-wing Britain and Europe is demonstrated. Here's a picture with the crypto-fascist Nigel Farage with one of his Brexit buddies,
UKIP leader, Nigel Farage (L) with Andrew Lovie, neo-Nazi National Alliance member since 2000.
And it's undeniable that through the Republican-fascist Party and the Trump regime, such people are already highly placed in the government. That they present in the United States military and in police forces is also known, with all of the dangers that carries.
It is insane that the United States won't do anything to suppress this because some rich, white, slave-holders who couldn't possibly have imagined modern fascism or Nazism or Marxism decided to write a few lines of bad poetry as law in the 1780s.
The idea that we are not to learn anything from the scores of millions of genocidal murders of the past century. in order to prevent a recurrence of them as the memory of those murders fades in the past because of those lines written by those aristocrats all that time ago is madness. The pious, sacrosanct status given that idea is clearly something that we have already paid a huge price for, it is responsible for not only the rise of fascist terrorism here, it is what put Donald Trump into office. It is why Sean Spicer was reluctant to condemn the murder committed by James Jackson so infamously, ordering April Ryan not to shake her head as she obviously couldn't believe what he was saying in response to her question, yesterday.
It is time to de-Nazify the United States. To go after the peddlers of hate. You can either do it now, before it's too late, or after, in the rubble that covers the bodies afterwards. Like they did in Germany.
Hate Mail
Let me guess, you never actually read any of Marcel Gottlieb's work because it's in French and you don't read French. I have. It mostly ranges from the elevation of the trivial and not very amusing as a replacement for the actually funny
to the sledge-hammer heavy and not funny, not brave, easy as anything poking at the easily poked at in fashionable, Republican France. It's about as funny as Penn Jillett and about as intellectually significant as Bill Maher.
I've never seen it translated into English, perhaps because it really isn't very funny. I don't think it's funnier than Nancy and not as funny as Mutt and Jeff.
to the sledge-hammer heavy and not funny, not brave, easy as anything poking at the easily poked at in fashionable, Republican France. It's about as funny as Penn Jillett and about as intellectually significant as Bill Maher.
I've never seen it translated into English, perhaps because it really isn't very funny. I don't think it's funnier than Nancy and not as funny as Mutt and Jeff.
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Monday, March 27, 2017
Don't Let The Problems Of This World Drive You Slowly Out Of Your Mind
Nina Simone Be's That Way Sometime
I've been out all day on family business. I hope to write more tomorrow.
In the mean time, hate mail. It doesn't surprise me that the city boy doesn't know the difference between a rooster pheasant and a barnyard hen. He doesn't know his ass from his equally malodorous oxter. I suppose that will lead to more clueless and ignorant wit from the clueless and ignorant twit. His audience won't know the difference.
In the mean time, hate mail. It doesn't surprise me that the city boy doesn't know the difference between a rooster pheasant and a barnyard hen. He doesn't know his ass from his equally malodorous oxter. I suppose that will lead to more clueless and ignorant wit from the clueless and ignorant twit. His audience won't know the difference.
Sunday, March 26, 2017
The Naive Faith of The High Priests Of Atheist Scientism
Rereading that essay excerpted below, I have to remark on the amazing naivety of Richard Dawkins contained in the idea that his question would be asked by an alien to measure the level of human intellectual development, "Do you understand natural selection?"
The assumptions contained in that scenario attributing that question to intelligent extra-terrestrial beings are, rather, a good indication of the thinking of Dawkins than any non-human intelligence. Consider the range of baseless assumptions contained in it.
- First, that evolution (or life) as known on Earth exists everywhere or even anywhere else in the universe.
- Second, that any evolution might be through Dawkins' conception of natural selection (naive, even according to many Earth bound scientists) would be relevant to any or all evolution of life everywhere in the universe.
- Third, that any extra-terrestrial life forms would have come up with something like the theory of Natural Selection to explain their own evolution.
- Fourth, that even if they had come up with exactly Dawkins' naive neo-Darwinian framework to explain evolution that its explanatory sufficiency would endure to the stage of development they would be at to be in a position to be here making such an evaluation of life on Earth.
- Fifth, that they would agree that natural selection was an adequate or even valid explanation of evolution on Earth when there are already, at our, presumably, comparatively primitive level of development, other explanations that are non-selective and are believed by some scientists to be more powerful explanations than Dawkins' naive concept of natural selection. You might want to look up what one of Carl Sagan's earlier wives, the late Lynn Margulis had to say about such stuff. Or not. I'll point out that it's likely that the usefulness of Margulis' work will very likely survive longer than anything Dawkins or, I'd guess, Carl Sagan contributed.*
I invite anyone to add to that list.
Yet that kind of faith is endemic to the culture of neo-atheism. Such stunningly, absurdly naive, entirely evidence-free statements by these sciency atheists is taken by the even more naive as being in some way meaningful.
Just about whenever the discovery of an allegedly earth-like planet is announced any number of such statements are made. They often riff off of stuff that Carl Sagan said, based on his entirely evidence-free contention that the chemistry of the universe means that there is extraterrestrial life and that there will be an evolutionary guarantee that such life is intelligent and, so, will develop technology and science. Considering that such statements as the relatively recent and quite controversial** contention taken among contemporary scientists of his former wife, Lynn Margulis and some others that non-human life was conscious and many of his fellow-atheists that human beings aren't really conscious, you wonder how they could come to that conclusion. But, then, being an atheist-scientist-skeptic is all about having it both ways at different times.
I remember a blog atheist throwing a quote from Sagan at me, the gist of which is that the day that extra-terrestrial life is found is the final nail in the coffin of religion. They seem to all be searching for that golden spike to put in that coffin. My question was what if that extra-terrestrial intelligence, presumably superior to our intelligence if they get here, what if they are religious believers? Which doesn't seem to have occurred to them as a possibility.
What's clear is that, as of this morning of March 26, 2017, all of the extra-terrestrials that these people gab about with such confidence are all in their heads, fulfilling their own cherished hopes. I would say that a lot of what is imagined and even presented as science in current biology is also all in their heads since so much of it, its behavior, its (not really there according to their own orthodoxy) consciousness is now and forever to be entirely unevidenced at all, not to mention in any form which can be subjected to the real methods of real science.
* A few years back, attending the funeral of one of my friends, a research biologist, her doctoral advisor said in the eulogy that her masters thesis was so good that it was still being cited thirty years after she published it. Much of scientific truth has a shelf-life. Especially as what is studied gets more complex.
** For example: There are still scientific sceptics about animal consciousness. In his book, Crick wrote “it is sentimental to idealize animals” and that for many animals life in captivity is better, longer and less brutal than life in the wild.
Similar views still prevail in some quarters. In her recent book Why Animals Matter: Animal consciousness, animal welfare, and human well-being, Marian Stamp Dawkins at the University of Oxford claims we still don’t really know if other animals are conscious and that we should “remain skeptical and agnostic… Militantly agnostic if necessary.”
Dawkins inexplicably ignores the data that those at the meeting used to formulate their declaration, and goes so far as to claim that it is actually harmful to animals to base welfare decisions on their being conscious.
Obviously what such materialists choose to be "militantly agnostic" about is a matter of ideological convenience.
P, S, I love this question and answer by Margulis from that link above:
You have attacked population genetics—the foundation of much current evolutionary research—as “numerology.” What do you mean by that term?
- When evolutionary biologists use computer modeling to find out how many mutations you need to get from one species to another, it’s not mathematics—it’s numerology. They are limiting the field of study to something that’s manageable and ignoring what’s most important. They tend to know nothing about atmospheric chemistry and the influence it has on the organisms or the influence that the organisms have on the chemistry. They know nothing about biological systems like physiology, ecology, and biochemistry. Darwin was saying that changes accumulate through time, but population geneticists are describing mixtures that are temporary. Whatever is brought together by sex is broken up in the next generation by the same process. Evolutionary biology has been taken over by population geneticists. They are reductionists ad absurdum. Population geneticist Richard Lewontin gave a talk here at UMass Amherst about six years ago, and he mathematized all of it—changes in the population, random mutation, sexual selection, cost and benefit. At the end of his talk he said, “You know, we’ve tried to test these ideas in the field and the lab, and there are really no measurements that match the quantities I’ve told you about.” This just appalled me. So I said, “Richard Lewontin, you are a great lecturer to have the courage to say it’s gotten you nowhere. But then why do you continue to do this work?” And he looked around and said, “It’s the only thing I know how to do, and if I don’t do it I won’t get my grant money.” So he’s an honest man, and that’s an honest answer.
The assumptions contained in that scenario attributing that question to intelligent extra-terrestrial beings are, rather, a good indication of the thinking of Dawkins than any non-human intelligence. Consider the range of baseless assumptions contained in it.
- First, that evolution (or life) as known on Earth exists everywhere or even anywhere else in the universe.
- Second, that any evolution might be through Dawkins' conception of natural selection (naive, even according to many Earth bound scientists) would be relevant to any or all evolution of life everywhere in the universe.
- Third, that any extra-terrestrial life forms would have come up with something like the theory of Natural Selection to explain their own evolution.
- Fourth, that even if they had come up with exactly Dawkins' naive neo-Darwinian framework to explain evolution that its explanatory sufficiency would endure to the stage of development they would be at to be in a position to be here making such an evaluation of life on Earth.
- Fifth, that they would agree that natural selection was an adequate or even valid explanation of evolution on Earth when there are already, at our, presumably, comparatively primitive level of development, other explanations that are non-selective and are believed by some scientists to be more powerful explanations than Dawkins' naive concept of natural selection. You might want to look up what one of Carl Sagan's earlier wives, the late Lynn Margulis had to say about such stuff. Or not. I'll point out that it's likely that the usefulness of Margulis' work will very likely survive longer than anything Dawkins or, I'd guess, Carl Sagan contributed.*
I invite anyone to add to that list.
Yet that kind of faith is endemic to the culture of neo-atheism. Such stunningly, absurdly naive, entirely evidence-free statements by these sciency atheists is taken by the even more naive as being in some way meaningful.
Just about whenever the discovery of an allegedly earth-like planet is announced any number of such statements are made. They often riff off of stuff that Carl Sagan said, based on his entirely evidence-free contention that the chemistry of the universe means that there is extraterrestrial life and that there will be an evolutionary guarantee that such life is intelligent and, so, will develop technology and science. Considering that such statements as the relatively recent and quite controversial** contention taken among contemporary scientists of his former wife, Lynn Margulis and some others that non-human life was conscious and many of his fellow-atheists that human beings aren't really conscious, you wonder how they could come to that conclusion. But, then, being an atheist-scientist-skeptic is all about having it both ways at different times.
I remember a blog atheist throwing a quote from Sagan at me, the gist of which is that the day that extra-terrestrial life is found is the final nail in the coffin of religion. They seem to all be searching for that golden spike to put in that coffin. My question was what if that extra-terrestrial intelligence, presumably superior to our intelligence if they get here, what if they are religious believers? Which doesn't seem to have occurred to them as a possibility.
What's clear is that, as of this morning of March 26, 2017, all of the extra-terrestrials that these people gab about with such confidence are all in their heads, fulfilling their own cherished hopes. I would say that a lot of what is imagined and even presented as science in current biology is also all in their heads since so much of it, its behavior, its (not really there according to their own orthodoxy) consciousness is now and forever to be entirely unevidenced at all, not to mention in any form which can be subjected to the real methods of real science.
* A few years back, attending the funeral of one of my friends, a research biologist, her doctoral advisor said in the eulogy that her masters thesis was so good that it was still being cited thirty years after she published it. Much of scientific truth has a shelf-life. Especially as what is studied gets more complex.
** For example: There are still scientific sceptics about animal consciousness. In his book, Crick wrote “it is sentimental to idealize animals” and that for many animals life in captivity is better, longer and less brutal than life in the wild.
Similar views still prevail in some quarters. In her recent book Why Animals Matter: Animal consciousness, animal welfare, and human well-being, Marian Stamp Dawkins at the University of Oxford claims we still don’t really know if other animals are conscious and that we should “remain skeptical and agnostic… Militantly agnostic if necessary.”
Dawkins inexplicably ignores the data that those at the meeting used to formulate their declaration, and goes so far as to claim that it is actually harmful to animals to base welfare decisions on their being conscious.
Obviously what such materialists choose to be "militantly agnostic" about is a matter of ideological convenience.
P, S, I love this question and answer by Margulis from that link above:
You have attacked population genetics—the foundation of much current evolutionary research—as “numerology.” What do you mean by that term?
- When evolutionary biologists use computer modeling to find out how many mutations you need to get from one species to another, it’s not mathematics—it’s numerology. They are limiting the field of study to something that’s manageable and ignoring what’s most important. They tend to know nothing about atmospheric chemistry and the influence it has on the organisms or the influence that the organisms have on the chemistry. They know nothing about biological systems like physiology, ecology, and biochemistry. Darwin was saying that changes accumulate through time, but population geneticists are describing mixtures that are temporary. Whatever is brought together by sex is broken up in the next generation by the same process. Evolutionary biology has been taken over by population geneticists. They are reductionists ad absurdum. Population geneticist Richard Lewontin gave a talk here at UMass Amherst about six years ago, and he mathematized all of it—changes in the population, random mutation, sexual selection, cost and benefit. At the end of his talk he said, “You know, we’ve tried to test these ideas in the field and the lab, and there are really no measurements that match the quantities I’ve told you about.” This just appalled me. So I said, “Richard Lewontin, you are a great lecturer to have the courage to say it’s gotten you nowhere. But then why do you continue to do this work?” And he looked around and said, “It’s the only thing I know how to do, and if I don’t do it I won’t get my grant money.” So he’s an honest man, and that’s an honest answer.
Hate Mail - "So in other words No True Christian"
Note: Yet again, a draft of this was posted by mistake, I'm in the process of doing a better edit of it now.
P. Z. Myers isn't the hot item in blog land that he used to be, but, then, neither is the atheism fad. I think the atheism fad has pretty well gotten old.
Myers became semi-famous through his venomous hate spewing and his collection of a lot of equally putrid regulars who loved to bask in their own asserted superiority and to claim the stupidity of anyone who wasn't in their in-crowd. That would seem to be a pattern with blog communities like it is in 7th grade.
In doing that Myers wrote a number of stupid things and pulled at least one stupid stunt, his "Great Desecration" fraud being his greatest claim to fleeting fame. I debunked that one based on his own absurd claim about how he got sent a consecrated host which was very far fetched. To get around the charge that he'd encouraged someone to steal one for him, his claim of how it happened was totally unbelievable. He said that a Catholic boy kept instead of eating the host as required only to send it to the great PZ after he turned atheist some time later. The unlikelihood of an observant Catholic keeping a consecrated host to start with made that ridiculous. Then for Myers to claim that he posted a video of the boy receiving communion on that occasion only made it more absurd. I am quite sure that it would be impossible to honestly calculate the odds of some random Catholic boy who would later send his illicitly kept host to P. Z. Myers just happening to have a video of him at the mass where he did that but anyone with a mind in their head who believed such a tall tale is incredibly credulous. That his true believers believed his tall tale on his say so put them on the level of the most easily hoaxed of true believers in anything.
The slogan Myers gave his fan boys and gals, "It's just a cracker" and that its status as consecrated didn't mean anything was disproved in one long, long brawl on a blog when I posted my doubts about Myers tall tale and over hundreds of furious, enraged comments his true believers who proved that about the only thing that could definitely be known about it was that it was entirely important to them that it had been consecrated and so it was not "just a cracker" to the idiots who repeated that like emoto-tronic atheists.
I also went after his "Courtier's Reply" which was his argument that atheists, like his then - I'm told not current - friend, Richard Dawkins, the holder of an endowed chair at Oxford, didn't need to know what he was talking about in order to be held to be an authoritative voice in talking about things he knew nothing about. I pointed out that in doing so Myers, an associate professor in science at a small but accredited American University, was essentially making the argument of the experts who refused to look through Galileo's telescope to see the evidence of what he was telling them. As far as I know, Myers wasn't booted out of the fellowship of modern science for upholding the much ridiculed anti-scientific standards of late medieval scholastic cosmology. His getting booted out of the pseudo-skeptical movement didn't come with that, it came with him making a serious accusation of crime against a far bigger name in pseudo-skepticism, which I also wrote about, links will be given on request.
But this is about one of the few other claims to fame that Myers has, his introduction of the "No True Scotsman" phrase to most of his atheist fan boys and gals. I wrote about that too, about how absurd it was for a biologist to mix up a matter of inheritance, being born a Scot to parents who were Scots, which is an inalienable fact, what happens when people choose to make the inheritance of a political-tribal identity a matter of biological inheritance. Which is not an uninteresting question to think about, especially in that that perhaps entirely artificial categorization infests much of the literature of modern biology, anthropology, sociology, eugenics - neo and not neo and, as it seems to be fading evo-psy.
A "true Scot" is defined by their parentage, it is an inalienable categorization based on that involuntary aspect of identy, If you're born as "Scotsman" you will stay one. Religion in't like that. "True scots" can belong to any number of different religions. They can belong to any number of reform denominations, they can convert to other denominations, Christian or non-Christian, harmless fantasy fun neo-Pagans or neo-Nazi pagan. They can be atheists, I suppose. Their identity as a Scot isn't dependent on that. Such a "true Scotsman's" membership in the denomination of their choice depends on their belief in the beliefs of that denomination and, or, their adherence to its requirements. If a "True Scotsman" who is a Catholic publicly committed one of the relatively few acts that will get you excommunicated from the Catholic Church, that "True Scotsman" will have been deemed to not be a "true Catholic".
I would like to think more about the implications of that in regard to the understanding of things that Myers then friend and fellow biologist, Richard Dawkins who he was shielding from criticism in coming up with such stuff. I would like to consider what it means for two university science teachers to dismiss the requirement that they know what they're talking about to retain their status as credible members of the academic and scientific communities. I'd think they were not true and honest members of modern academic communities due to that, but I don't get to determine who is in and who is out.
Lewontin noted that Dawkins claimed that an extra-terrestrial attempting to gauge the level of human civilization would ask, "Do you understand natural selection?" Lewontin counters that a better question would be, "Do you understand the difference between sets and their members?" (implying that the early Dawkins does not). Many have noted that the immortality that Dawkins attributes to genes applies not the physical DNA but to the whole set through time of the copies or to the form of the sequence as manifested in successive, physically different, individual DNA molecules. Williams new "codical" realm likewise resides in this quasi-Platonic region, separate from the material world.
I threw that in just for the thrill of it. Or the hell of it. Perhaps someday Dawkins won't be thought of a "true scientist", I'm pretty sure that Myers won't be thought of much at all. Just as the work of the, then, fully and properly credentialed "true science" so many scientific racists and eugenicists were producing is now demoted as "science" with quote marks and many of them have fallen into obscurity.
But back to the question of being a "true something or other". I remember back when Alabama Senator Richard Shelby was a Democrat, he voted against Robert Bork because as a Democrat, he knew his election depended on the votes of Black voters. But as he saw personal opportunity favored him changing parties, it was reported that he was leaking information from closed Democratic meetings to the Republican Party he was, probably, already planning on switching to. Though he was registered as a Democrat, Shelby was not a "true Democrat" he was a sleazy Republican mole.
It isn't a shock that the ignorant jerk who trolls me sent me that pat phrase from P. Z. Myers doesn't understand the problem with it, it is rather shocking that even an associate professor of biology at a small but fully accredited American university wouldn't be able to make the distinction between a classification that doesn't depend on adherence to a moral code and beliefs, one which is merely granted as a matter of pseudo-biological inheritance and another which asserts beliefs and moral. But the matter of whether the inheritance of tribal, national or racial identity is meaningfully definable or even real is a longer and more seriously complex idea than my idiot troll could possibly begin to get.
P. Z. Myers isn't the hot item in blog land that he used to be, but, then, neither is the atheism fad. I think the atheism fad has pretty well gotten old.
Myers became semi-famous through his venomous hate spewing and his collection of a lot of equally putrid regulars who loved to bask in their own asserted superiority and to claim the stupidity of anyone who wasn't in their in-crowd. That would seem to be a pattern with blog communities like it is in 7th grade.
In doing that Myers wrote a number of stupid things and pulled at least one stupid stunt, his "Great Desecration" fraud being his greatest claim to fleeting fame. I debunked that one based on his own absurd claim about how he got sent a consecrated host which was very far fetched. To get around the charge that he'd encouraged someone to steal one for him, his claim of how it happened was totally unbelievable. He said that a Catholic boy kept instead of eating the host as required only to send it to the great PZ after he turned atheist some time later. The unlikelihood of an observant Catholic keeping a consecrated host to start with made that ridiculous. Then for Myers to claim that he posted a video of the boy receiving communion on that occasion only made it more absurd. I am quite sure that it would be impossible to honestly calculate the odds of some random Catholic boy who would later send his illicitly kept host to P. Z. Myers just happening to have a video of him at the mass where he did that but anyone with a mind in their head who believed such a tall tale is incredibly credulous. That his true believers believed his tall tale on his say so put them on the level of the most easily hoaxed of true believers in anything.
The slogan Myers gave his fan boys and gals, "It's just a cracker" and that its status as consecrated didn't mean anything was disproved in one long, long brawl on a blog when I posted my doubts about Myers tall tale and over hundreds of furious, enraged comments his true believers who proved that about the only thing that could definitely be known about it was that it was entirely important to them that it had been consecrated and so it was not "just a cracker" to the idiots who repeated that like emoto-tronic atheists.
I also went after his "Courtier's Reply" which was his argument that atheists, like his then - I'm told not current - friend, Richard Dawkins, the holder of an endowed chair at Oxford, didn't need to know what he was talking about in order to be held to be an authoritative voice in talking about things he knew nothing about. I pointed out that in doing so Myers, an associate professor in science at a small but accredited American University, was essentially making the argument of the experts who refused to look through Galileo's telescope to see the evidence of what he was telling them. As far as I know, Myers wasn't booted out of the fellowship of modern science for upholding the much ridiculed anti-scientific standards of late medieval scholastic cosmology. His getting booted out of the pseudo-skeptical movement didn't come with that, it came with him making a serious accusation of crime against a far bigger name in pseudo-skepticism, which I also wrote about, links will be given on request.
But this is about one of the few other claims to fame that Myers has, his introduction of the "No True Scotsman" phrase to most of his atheist fan boys and gals. I wrote about that too, about how absurd it was for a biologist to mix up a matter of inheritance, being born a Scot to parents who were Scots, which is an inalienable fact, what happens when people choose to make the inheritance of a political-tribal identity a matter of biological inheritance. Which is not an uninteresting question to think about, especially in that that perhaps entirely artificial categorization infests much of the literature of modern biology, anthropology, sociology, eugenics - neo and not neo and, as it seems to be fading evo-psy.
A "true Scot" is defined by their parentage, it is an inalienable categorization based on that involuntary aspect of identy, If you're born as "Scotsman" you will stay one. Religion in't like that. "True scots" can belong to any number of different religions. They can belong to any number of reform denominations, they can convert to other denominations, Christian or non-Christian, harmless fantasy fun neo-Pagans or neo-Nazi pagan. They can be atheists, I suppose. Their identity as a Scot isn't dependent on that. Such a "true Scotsman's" membership in the denomination of their choice depends on their belief in the beliefs of that denomination and, or, their adherence to its requirements. If a "True Scotsman" who is a Catholic publicly committed one of the relatively few acts that will get you excommunicated from the Catholic Church, that "True Scotsman" will have been deemed to not be a "true Catholic".
I would like to think more about the implications of that in regard to the understanding of things that Myers then friend and fellow biologist, Richard Dawkins who he was shielding from criticism in coming up with such stuff. I would like to consider what it means for two university science teachers to dismiss the requirement that they know what they're talking about to retain their status as credible members of the academic and scientific communities. I'd think they were not true and honest members of modern academic communities due to that, but I don't get to determine who is in and who is out.
Lewontin noted that Dawkins claimed that an extra-terrestrial attempting to gauge the level of human civilization would ask, "Do you understand natural selection?" Lewontin counters that a better question would be, "Do you understand the difference between sets and their members?" (implying that the early Dawkins does not). Many have noted that the immortality that Dawkins attributes to genes applies not the physical DNA but to the whole set through time of the copies or to the form of the sequence as manifested in successive, physically different, individual DNA molecules. Williams new "codical" realm likewise resides in this quasi-Platonic region, separate from the material world.
I threw that in just for the thrill of it. Or the hell of it. Perhaps someday Dawkins won't be thought of a "true scientist", I'm pretty sure that Myers won't be thought of much at all. Just as the work of the, then, fully and properly credentialed "true science" so many scientific racists and eugenicists were producing is now demoted as "science" with quote marks and many of them have fallen into obscurity.
But back to the question of being a "true something or other". I remember back when Alabama Senator Richard Shelby was a Democrat, he voted against Robert Bork because as a Democrat, he knew his election depended on the votes of Black voters. But as he saw personal opportunity favored him changing parties, it was reported that he was leaking information from closed Democratic meetings to the Republican Party he was, probably, already planning on switching to. Though he was registered as a Democrat, Shelby was not a "true Democrat" he was a sleazy Republican mole.
It isn't a shock that the ignorant jerk who trolls me sent me that pat phrase from P. Z. Myers doesn't understand the problem with it, it is rather shocking that even an associate professor of biology at a small but fully accredited American university wouldn't be able to make the distinction between a classification that doesn't depend on adherence to a moral code and beliefs, one which is merely granted as a matter of pseudo-biological inheritance and another which asserts beliefs and moral. But the matter of whether the inheritance of tribal, national or racial identity is meaningfully definable or even real is a longer and more seriously complex idea than my idiot troll could possibly begin to get.