Richard Dawkins gets a letter and shares it with PZ, who he knows will share it with the world. This nasty crank letter was directly attributed as follows:
However, the letter is in response to Dawkins' article regarding the drug "Gerin oil", and its purported hallucinogenic properties. There is no reference to Christianity in the Dawkins article, although the unsubstantiated claim is made that the 9/11 attackers were users:"Warning! Uses Christian Language".
"The four doomed flights of September 11, 2001, were Gerin Oil trips: all nineteen of the hijackers were high on the drug at the time"Such a blatant statement should be corroborated with evidence, but is not; moreover, since none of the remains of the attackers exist, the claim is specious at best. And most importantly, it has nothing to do with Christianity whatsoever.
Of course there also is no reference to religion at all in the letter, much less Christianity. So the attribution is a blatant lie. PZ no longer fears direct lies, having survived intact his assault on Catholicism, and probably having gained more readers due to the increasing notoriety that he cherishes.
Watch for ever more blatant lies from the ever more hateful and virulent PZ primordial soup.
ADDENDUM:
I am unable to find any real source of information on "Gerin Oil". All search results lead inexorably back to Dawkins' article. Could Gerin Oil be a hoax, or a fraud? The U.S. Center for Disease Control contains no references (zero, none) to either "Gerin Oil" or "Gerinol", its purported "scientific" name. The CDC does, however, have 2,480 references to cocaine, and 407 references to LSD.
Does Gerin Oil even exist? I am skeptical. If it does not, what should we make of the letter Dawkins claims to have received? Could all of this be a fraud? And if so, to what purpose, other than to increase the perceived victimhood of the New Atheists? Any real, tangible evidence on this issue would be welcome, indeed.
ADDENDUM II
This is probably the first time that I know of when I should have gone to Wiki first. It turns out that Gerin Oil is a Dawkins anagram for "religion", and he uses the anagram in his attempt to portray religion as a drug. The Gerin oil article, then, actually was an attack on religion, and the letter conceivably was a response, albeit a demonstrably radical, irrational and ineffective one. It is another case of baiting the believers, getting the marginally (or more) insane to respond, and then to gloat at the response.
PZ's response is still a lie; the language in no way is Christian, period. So PZ is just continuing the bait game.
4 comments:
Satire not available in your area?
"Gerin oil" is an anagram of "religion"
I finally got to that. As I have said before here, satire and analogies rarely work well when written, especially by otherwise serious people discussing serious topics. Obviously I don't hang on Dawkins every word; the relative inanity escaped me until a wiki entry set me straight.
I should have known however, that Dawkins would not be addressing anything other than his hatred of religion. I was mistaken to think that he would be making a serious contribution of scientific import.
The Gerin Oil diversion does not detract from the onerous use of the letter to tar Christians in general. The Guilt by Association Fallacy is a favorite of certain popular Atheists. And they seem to profit from it, and happily. That was, and is, the point here.
While I agree with brian westley in that it was kind of silly of you to miss the satire (i'm no fan of dawkins and even i got the reference), i really have to agree, there's no indication the author of the letter is actually Christian. He doesn't even mention religion, much less christianity, and doesn't make any reference at all to the actual content of the article, he just calls Dawkins names.
For all we know, the guy could be a Muslim, the only indication as to his religion is that his name is Peter something (can't make out the handwriting).
Oh well.
Well, there apparently is such a person as Peter Colley of Bellevue Washington, although I have no idea whether he sent the letter or not. And yes, I was taken in altogether, although I did do enough research to conclude probable foul play. The bad part is that I had come across that article long ago, and had completely forgotten it... until I saw the Wiki write-up(!)
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