PZ Meyers, On Ghosts and Afterlife

H.T.: A Reddy:

No ghosts, and no afterlife of any kind

Basic stuff: Brian Cox explains that there’s no physics to support the existence of ghosts, but I’ve also heard Sean Carroll explain the same idea.

Standard Materialist complaint: "Yeah, I asked a dead guy about it, and he didn't say anything". Ipso Facto QED. Settled Science.

But the serious ridicule object is the Appeal to the Large Hadron Collider: "checked all the frequencies, no sign of ghosts or afterlife or any physical medium to support them". But did they check the 5th through 11th coincident dimensions demanded under the beautiful String Theory Equations? No? Why Not?

Well, why not? Don't biology profs like String Theory? What about Carroll?

Just: Why NOT??

UPDATE:
When did the LHC detect Dark Matter? Dark Energy?

Understanding only 4% of the visible universe (and only a small part of that is said even to be visible) is not impressive. Further, the origin of the Big Bang had to be fudged with an invisible "expansionary time", violating physics laws. Further still, the discovery of a Red shift galaxy in front of a white galaxy means that red shift has no meaning regarding an expanding universe - and if so, then there was no Big Bang. And even more further still, measurements of the age of the universe and age of the earth will be compromised by all this new info. When will physicists admit to their complete failure to understand most of the universe? Maybe even ALL of the universe?

The Marginalization of PZ Meyers

The perpetual moral indignation of Atheist PZ Meyers has long been a semi-dominant feature of today's Atheist culture. His approach to argumentation is "ridicule works", and that is his only contribution to the Atheist conversation. But not just ridicule; the nastiest, most vulgar, gutter-speak are a personal PZ trademark. This trait has allowed the accumulation of a horde of like-types on his blog, Pharyngula. PZ has made himself and his followers into a cartoon of Atheist contempt and hollow self-bestowed elitism which also self-bestows an amoral "morality" which is applied to everyone who is not them. If you are not Them, you will receive contempt; it's that simple.

I followed PZ for a while, around a decade ago (I think it was). But finally I quit even going there, because it consisted only of trash-mouth, juvenile-style, pseudo-shock spasms which were devoid of any rational content worth discussing or analyzing. Now PZ has offended so many on his own team (Team-Atheism) that they are disowning him, publicly.

For example, Atheist Ireland has issued a public rejection of PZ, in the form of a group rebuke:

Atheist Ireland publicly dissociates itself from the harmful and hateful rhetoric of PZ Myers

"Atheist Ireland is publicly dissociating itself from the hurtful and dehumanising, hateful and violent, unjust and defamatory rhetoric of the atheist blogger PZ Myers. The final of many, many straws were his latest smear that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is ‘happily exploiting atrocities’, and his subsequent description of Atheist Ireland’s chairperson as ‘the Irish wanker’. We are also asking all ethical organisations and individuals to consider how you can help to reverse his harmful impact on both individuals and the atheist movement generally."

It will be interesting to see if many, or any, other "ethical organisations" join in their condemnation of PZ. There are lots of potential individuals who might join this effort. Many of those who have been slimed by Meyers are actually in the following section of Atheist Ireland's post:

"Some examples of his hurtful and dehumanising rhetoric

He said that ‘the scum rose to the top of the atheist movement’, that it is ‘burdened by cretinous reactionaries’, that ‘sexist and misogynistic scumbags’ are ‘not a fringe phenomenon’, and that if you don’t agree with Atheism Plus, you are an ‘Asshole Atheist’. He agreed that science fetishism reproduces the ‘white supremacist logic of the New Atheist Movement.’ He said ‘I officially divorce myself from the skeptic movement,’ which ‘has attracted way too many thuggish jerks, especially in the leadership’.

He said Richard Dawkins ‘seems to have developed a callous indifference to the sexual abuse of children’ and ‘has been eaten by brain parasites’, Michael Nugent is ‘the Irish wanker’ and a ‘demented fuckwit’, Ann Marie Waters is a ‘nutter’, Russell Blackford is a ‘lying fuckhead’, Bill Maher’s date at an event was ‘candy to decorate [her sugar daddy’s] arm in public’, Ben Radford is a ‘revolting narcissistic scumbag’ and his lawyer is ‘J Noble Dogshit’, Rosetta scientist Matt Taylor and Bill Maher are ‘assholes’, and Abbie Smith and her ‘coterie of slimy acolytes’ are ‘virtual non-entities’. He called Irish blogger ZenBuffy a ‘narcissistic wanker,’ after she said she has experienced mental illness.

He described Robin Williams’ suicide as ‘the death of a wealthy white man dragging us away from news about brown people’, said that a white lady who made racist comments ‘looks like the kind of person who would have laughed at nanu-nanu’, then added: ‘I’m mainly feeling that I should have been more rude, because asking me to have been nicer about the dead famous guy is completely missing the point’. He said of other dead people that Charles Darwin was a ‘sexist asshat’, Richard Feynman was a ‘reprehensible asshole’, and Christopher Hitchens was a ‘bloodthirsty barbarian’ and a ‘club-carrying primitive’.

Some examples of his hateful and violent rhetoric

Among the many people he publicly ‘hates’, ‘despises’ or ‘detests’ are philosophers Alain de Botton and Harriet Baber, interfaith activist Chris Stedman, comparative religion author Karen Armstrong, pastor Lee Strobel, columnist Richard Cohen, attorney Debbie Schlussel, creationists Ken Ham and Fred Phelps, broadcasters Bob Beckel and Rush Limbaugh, and authors Ben Stein, Bryan Appleyard and Dinesh D’Souza. Just last month he said that his ‘contempt’ for US President Ronald Reagan has vastly increased.

He also employs hate speech against Christians (‘I left the theatre filled with contempt and loathing for Christians’), apocalypse-mongers (‘they make me furious and fill me with an angry contempt’), ‘your average, run-of-the-mill Christian’ (‘I despise Karen Armstrong almost as much as I do Fred Phelps’), and several people who were organising a prayer initiative (‘Jesus Christ but I hate these slimebags’ who are ‘demented fuckwits every one.’)

He uses violent rhetoric. He said ‘I’ve got to start carrying a knife now’ to kill Christians if they pray instead of helping him while he is dying. He said about a meal: ‘Don’t show up to pick a fight or we’ll pitch you off a pier.’ When a Brazilian priest died in a charity ballooning accident, he said ‘my new dream’ will be shooting priests out of the sky from an aircraft. When a Christian shopkeeper apologised for offending atheists, he refused to accept the apology, saying ‘No. Fuck him to the ground.’ He would rather debate William Lane Craig in writing ‘where I can pin him down, stick a knife in the bastard, and twist it for a good long while’. He praised a blog post that ‘shanks Thunderf00t in the kidneys and mocks him cruelly’.

He has encouraged his blog commenters to ‘rhetorically hand [critics] a rotting porcupine and tell you to stuff it up your nether orifice’. They in turn have told people to ‘put a three week old decaying porcupine dipped in tar and broken glass up your arse sideways’, to ‘fuck yourself sideways’ with a ‘rusty chainsaw’, ‘red-hot pokers’ or a ‘rusty coat hanger’, and to ‘go die in a fire. slowly. seriously’. More recently he said of ‘faux-Vulcan shit’ that he encourages his commentariat to ‘draw their knives and flense it so thoroughly the dispassionate ass is feeling the pain in every nerve ending’.

Some examples of his unjust and defamatory rhetoric

In his latest smear just last weekend, he accused Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who lives with constant security protection against threats on her life, of ‘happily exploiting atrocities to justify continued injustices’, and of ‘using the threat of murder elsewhere as a club to silence those who strive for respect and dignity in their lives’. He based this smear on a misleadingly edited quote from Ayaan’s keynote speech to the American Atheists Convention.

PZ did not challenge commenters who said Richard Dawkins is a ‘racist misogynist piece of shit who thinks child molestation doesn’t count unless there’s rape or murder’, that ‘if he’s not actually a child molester he’s dangerously close to wearing the uniform of one’, and that ‘Dawkins and his rape cheerleaders can fuck a power socket’. But he did ban a commenter who defended Richard, telling him: ‘Goodbye. We don’t need your petty resistance to any dissent from the sacred position of your great heroes around here. Fuck off.’

When Michael Nugent highlighted the harmful effect of his behaviour, PZ responded by publicly accusing him of ‘defending and providing a haven for rapists’, saying the evidence for this was people who comment on Michael’s blog. He has since refused for six months to withdraw and apologise for this defamatory smear, adding that Michael also ‘supports rapists’, and is a ‘demented fuckwit’ and ‘the Irish wanker’. His blog network, FreeThought Blogs, has now refused for three months to even respond to repeated emails asking them to address a complaint about this issue."

There are other sites which take on PZ, including the Friendly Atheist site, which created a tumbling effect described by Atheist Revolution:

Hemant Mehta's post appears to have generated some strong reactions from the Freethought Blogs/Skepchick crowd, as he was accused by Rebecca Watson of endorsing "a hate forum." Why does this sort of accusation sound so familiar? Oh, that's right! Hemant runs a hate group. Anyway, Watson's post was sufficiently over-the-line to draw a response from the Center for Inquiry's Ron Lindsay.

Atheist sects are now morally committed to destroying the opposing moral sects which infest Atheism - at least on-line Atheism. Because each Atheist is more moral than all other Atheists, this moral skirmish could develop into something even more interesting than the moral banishment of PZ Meyers into an obscure corner of the web. Who knows? Maybe Meyers will succeed in taking over the entire movement with his own personal moral sect. He certainly won't be quiet. Hmm. Isn't sectarianism a religious problem?

The Unbearable Pain of Being TERF

There comes a time in the inclusionary business when exclusion is necessary in order to preserve the inclusion. This paradox/non--coherence has come about for the TERFs, a group of feminists who exclude transsexuals from the legitimacy of "being female", and thus the appellation, Trans-Excusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs).

Now over at PZs place, TERFs get bashed because they aren't as inclusive as are PZs guys, who are excluding TERFs from legitimacy due to their exclusion. Or something like that. It doesn't have to make sense, other than that "we are the most inclusive EVAH, and we exclude you because you aren't as inclusive as we deem it moral to be".

So the exclusionary TERFs are excluded by the inclusionary but exclusives at PZs place. Which, BTW, is commenting on how assholes are ruining both Atheism and gaming, and figuring out how to exclude the assholes who aren't inclusive enough...

Can't make this up.

Link tip: Stefani; thanks!

A Note from PZ Meyers

I got this email from PZ:

I notice that you're using MY content

It's not a problem, except for the fact that you don't include a link back to the article on my site. Failure to do so is unethical and cowardly, which does help confirm my general opinion of believers, but probably isn't in your best interest.


--
PZ Myers, Ph.D. (320) 589-6343/fax 6371
Division of Science & Math 2135, 2390 Science
University of Minnesota, Morris
Morris, MN 56267 http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

Interesting veiled threat, there. I have always attributed the articles to PZ's place, and the dates corellate well, so I assumed that an intellegent source could find them at PZ's place. Unethical and cowardly? My, my. PZ can't seem to converse without personal attacks, and now veiled threats.

But, in order to keep his blood pressure down, I will include the link in the future. Sorry PZ. Lean back, take a breath and smash a cracker. You'll feel better.

PZ Watch 10.23.11 PZ on Scientific Attitude.

PZ attacks Anthony Watts concerning Watts position on the BEST report, which was purportedly designed to eliminate any fudging by NOAA / NASA. Here is PZ’s critique of Watts:

”He was so confident that he went on the record saying:

"I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong."

Excellent! That's a good scientific attitude.”

The Best Report was recently released.

”What do you think Anthony Watts' response was?

“I consider the paper fatally flawed as it now stands, and thus I recommend it be removed from publication consideration by JGR until such time that it can be reworked.”

Yep. Didn't give the results he wanted. Therefore, the experiment is bad.

A search of Watts’ post on the Best Report shows no reference to the term “fatally flawed”, and PZ gives no source for either of the quotes he attributes to Watts. A skeptic might question the veracity of PZ's claim that Watts made these statements.

Here is what Watts actually said, after listing the issues with which he agrees, and the procedural issues that he questions (in detail):

So there you have it, I accept their papers, and many of their findings, but disagree with some methods and results as is my right. It will be interesting to see if these survive peer review significantly unchanged.

One thing we can count on that WON’T normally be transparent is the peer review process, and if that process includes members of the “team” who are well versed enough to but already embracing the results such as Phil Jones has done, then the peer review will turn into “pal review”.

The solution is to make the names of the reviewers known. Since Dr. Muller and BEST wish to upset the apple cart of scientific procedure, putting public review before peer review, and because they make this self-assured and most extraordinary claim in their press release: (Note 1)

That’s some claim. Four papers that have not been peer-reviewed yet, and they KNOW they’ll pass peer review and will be in the next IPCC report? Is it just me or does that sound rigged? Or, is it just the product of an overactive ego on the part of the BEST group?

I say, if BEST and Dr. Muller truly believes in a transparent approach, as they state on the front page of their website…

What PZ approves of is AGW, an ideology. What PZ actually does is to distort and denigrate in the pursuit of Ridicule As Argument, which is PZ's specialty. Is there a reason that anyone should not withdraw approval from bad procedures and secret societies who approve each other's data? While I don't know whether the 60 year vs 30 year analysis is an argument with merit, PZ doesn't know either, and he doesn't address the actual issue, he attacks the person's motives. PZ is not science oriented, he is science infatuated and Scientistically impaired in the Leftist, Materialist tradition. Real science allows exactly what Watts has done, and Watts does have the right to object to procedures he didn't agree to in the first place. It's part of intellectual integrity, which is not a PZ strong point; it interferes with ideology. Nor has it been a strong point of the AGW perps.

Note 1. Quote: “Four scientific papers setting out these conclusions have been submitted for peer review and will form part of the literature for the next IPCC report on Climate Change. They can be accessed on: www.BerkeleyEarth.org .” Watts is right in questioning this process.

PZ Watch 8.23.11: PZ and Reason

PZ lauds a court decision which supports a teacher's attacks on religion in the classroom.

The issue was as follows:

”The dispute began in 2007 when Chad Farnan, then a 15-year-old sophomore in Corbett’s class, took issue with comments about creationism the teacher made during his lectures.

And you hear it all the time with people who say, ‘Well, if all this stuff that makes up the universe is here, something must have created it.’ Faulty logic. Very faulty logic.”

He continued: “The other possibility is, it’s always been there.… Your call as to which one of those notions is scientific and which one is magic.”

“All I’m saying is that, you know, the people who want to make the argument that God did it, there is as much evidence that God did it as there is that there is a giant spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it,” the transcript says.

Corbett told his students that “real” scientists try to disprove the theory of evolution. “Contrast that with creationists,” he told his students. “They never try to disprove creationism. They’re all running around trying to prove it. That’s deduction. It’s not science. Scientifically, it’s nonsense.”

Deduction is scientific nonsense? Let’s take these issues one at a time.

”Aristotle … argued, you know, there sort of has to be a God. Of course that’s nonsense,” Corbett said according to a transcript of his lecture. “I mean, that’s what you call deductive reasoning, you know.”

Aristotle is dismissed without any discussion of his reasoning, as “nonsense”. The reason given for the rejection is “deduction”. So deduction is inappropriate, according to this person.

“And you hear it all the time with people who say, ‘Well, if all this stuff that makes up the universe is here, something must have created it.’ Faulty logic. Very faulty logic.”

Really? And where is the fault? Just what logic are you using?

” He continued: “The other possibility is, it’s always been there.… Your call as to which one of those notions is scientific and which one is magic.”

The ignorance here is eyebrow deep: an ignorant Atheist teacher in charge of “educating” California students. The expanding universe convicted Einstein of a universal beginning 76 years ago. Scientists have pursued and accepted this from then until now. But not in this California classroom. So here’s my “call”: the universe had a beginning, and the beginning very likely had a cause; the other option, “it was always there” is too ignorant to even discuss.

But apparently PZ agrees with this. The teacher continues:

”“All I’m saying is that, you know, the people who want to make the argument that God did it, there is as much evidence that God did it as there is that there is a giant spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it,” the transcript says.

This is buffoon-Atheist-speak, using a straw man as logic. Consider that this person is not only teaching children his Atheist foolishness, but that the courts refused to consider the constitutional aspect (which they repeatedly apply to religious content) – indicating that the courts are unrelentingly Atheist-bound also. And consider that PZ, who is also “teaching” science - consider that all of these approve of this teacher’s fully faulty reasoning and perpetration of that upon his students.

Deduction is a full stage of the scientific process. Pared to a minimalist
sequence it is as follows:

Induction : Hypothesis : Deduction : Test : Adjust Hypothesis : Repeat Deduction : continue in this loop until the test results coincide with the hypothesis.

It would be interesting to know what this “teacher” thinks science consists of, if deduction is as evil as he portrays it.

But it is not surprising that PZ agrees with any court decision that favors Atheism, no matter what the fallacies are that support that decision. For PZ, fallacies exist only in the logic of the opposition.

Now, I do agree that "creationism" in the form of "Intelligent Design" seems to be deductive. But deduction is not the problem with ID; the problem with ID is that it is a rationalist pursuit with metaphysical overtones, so it is not science. Science is voluntarily hobbled to materialist pursuits due to the inability to test non-materialist claims. That is the point which should be made when teaching science, its possibilities and its limitations. The Philosophy of Science, and the Philosophy of Knowledge should be taught before any science is taught. But first it would have to be taught to teachers.

The other problem is that science is not the only road to knowledge, or even a major road to knowledge. Science depends on rationalist knowledge for its limited legitimacy: mathematics, logic and axioms. Science teachers seem to be blissfully unaware of the full intellectual landscape, and since that fits in with Atheism, it is just fine by them. But it actually makes them unfit to teach: they are too filled with training theory and are totally innocent of intellectual underpinnings. They can't pass on what they don't know. They also are victims of the Dewey philosophy, and they pass that along to the next generation.

However, ignorance can also be considered willful. For the Atheist who claims reason and rationality, willful ignorance challenges that claim.

Breaking News: PZ Watch 08.13.11

PZ Meyers is the International Humanist of 2011. Such a paragon of Humanist tolerance and respect for the Other; a perfect example of Humanism, the Humanists are proud of PZ.

Vox Day Takes On PZ Meyer,"The Fowl Atheist"

Vox Day and PZ Meyer have been going at it for a while on the subject of evolution as science. Vox subscribes to a view that is close to mine, which is that evolution does not get held to the highest standards required of the physical sciences, to wit, experimental replication. And that real biology owes nothing to evolution in its dizzying charge forward. PZ defends evolution with his understanding of scientific methodology and philosophy of science. It's best to read the discussion in full, but here are some of Vox's comments which I liked:
Vox:

” When an astrophysicist or an economist gets a prediction based on a hypothesis wrong, his consequent assumption is usually that the hypothesis is incorrect. When an evolutionary biologist gets a prediction based on a hypothesis wrong, his consequent assumption is always that the hypothesis cannot possibly be to blame, there must be some missing factor that has not been properly taken into account. If evolution by natural selection has not taken place, then evolution by some other mechanism must have taken place; the logical conclusion that the core hypothesis is simply incorrect and evolution did not take place is seldom, if ever, considered an option.”

The deifying of evolution is a result of Philosophical Materialism, which is a rational fallacy. The functional materialism of science does not in any way predict the necessity of total materialism as a philosophy much less a worldview, regardless of the poverty of logical understandings of the Philosophical Materialists (who generally are also scientismists). But evolution cannot be questioned under Philosophical Materialism, and anyone who does is attacked and punished by excruciating peer pressure which is asserted by the likes of PZ who attaches a lot of name calling and other juvenilia. In the world of evolution, there are individual facts, and the connecting "facts" are made up, extrapolated from “mountains of evidence” all of which does not provide any absolute proof of the extrapolation other than circumstantial. The extrapolation is declared True. But there are hitches, such as the inability to justify abiogenesis. Even the concept of “life” itself is frequently denied, because it cannot be justified under materialist rules of reality. So life has no essence, as declares Materialist/Evolutionist Massimo Pigliucci. Materialism requires denying the obvious when the obvious gets in the way of the narrative.

Again, Vox:

” PZ's answer is completely irrelevant. There is zero evidence that abiogenesis ever took place, robustly imagined mechanisms for it notwithstanding. To claim that because there was no life before, but there is now, ergo abiogenesis occurred, is the very sort of philosophy that science has largely come to supplant. Evolutionists tend to wisely punt on the logically-dictated abiogenetic foundation upon which their materialist assumptions rest, but there is no reason anyone should permit them to do so. It's rather like economists who attempt to leave debt out of their equations. The numbers may all add up nicely without it, but leaving out the most important element tends to call the entire model into question.”

That abiogenesis had to have happened is again predicated simply on the Materialist Fallacy: there can be no other answer – By Definition (regardless of how erroneous the definition). And that is as anti-science as one can get, even if one tries to define it as "science" in order to justify one's erroneous Philosophical Materialism.

There's more; read it over at Vox’s place.

Atheist Charity in Real Life

PZ has been collecting donations, or at least soliciting for them. And there is quite a dichotomy between PZ's solicitations and those going on locally here in Missouri.

Around here there are Christian based organizations of all stripes mobilized and on site at Joplin, as well as supply lines from churches to recovery centers in Joplin. Bass Pro Shop in Springfield has teamed with Convoy of Hope (faith based). Many industries seem to align with faith based volunteer organizations to provide food, clothing, clean up assistance and materials, and so on. It is the main topic in newspapers in the area.

PZ is also soliciting, but not for Joplin. His concern is for Camp Quest. As one might expect, Camp Quest is an indoctrination experience for children. If you are interested, here is the mission statement of Camp Quest:

Camp Quest Mission
Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States aimed at the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view.

The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government.

Through our programs we seek to:

Build a community for freethinking families
Foster curiosity, questioning, and critical thinking
Encourage reason and compassion as foundations of an ethical, productive and fulfilling life
Raise awareness of positive contributions made by atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic people to our society
Promote an open dialogue about metaphysical questions that is marked by challenging each other’s ideas while at the same time treating each other with respect
Demonstrate atheism and humanism as positive, family-friendly worldviews

It would be fascinating to quiz some of these kids on their "critical thinking" after their Camp Quest stay. Not to mention their concern for the kids in Joplin.

PZ Watch 05.25.11 From the Advocates of Humanist Tolerance and Compassion…

Seizing the low hanging fruit, PZ moves to condemn, basing his self-righteous moral anger on a billboard which read "That was awkward. 'No one knows the day of the hour...'":

I was sent that image by someone who clearly thought it was a joke, but I am not laughing. I'm angry, instead. I don't fucking care what fucking Jesus fucking said. The problem is NOT that some kook in California plucked numbers out of the Bible and conjured up a numerological justification for a date: the idiocy runs much deeper than that.

PZ uses the occasion to vent his venom on religion in general, and then goes on to preach using the common strawman vision of Christianity which indicates no theological comprehension whatsoever.

PZ preaches:

”A few will be spared; their reward is an eternity of servility, but at least they get to know they're better than everyone else. And that's the real lesson here: it's all about elitism and the most extreme threats imaginable to anyone who does not support these self-appointed masters of dogma.”

This has to be the most strained, apoplectic perversion of Christianity possible. Is this an objective analysis or a rant overflowing with hatred? The Atheist counter-attack claim of elitism as a characteristic of the Christian is begging to be compared to the elitist stances of such evangelists as Meyer, he who knows the best morality for all mankind because he is, you know, smart because he rejects non-physical reality. Self-appointed masters of dogma? Pot meet kettle.

No, Christ via the Bible does not teach the superiority of Christians, he teaches the imperfection of all mankind, including Christians. He taught specifically against the religious elites of the day, the Pharisees and Saducees. When Atheists attack, it is wise to check the validity of the strawman they have made for the occasion. Meyer seems to become more simplistically strawman-oriented as time goes on. But rationality claimed need not be rationality demonstrated, especially if one is to keep a herd of simplistic Atheist readers entertained.

”Sure, everyone is laughing at Harold Camping now, except his followers, who are undeterred. But you're missing the real joke. Look at every Abrahamic religion, with their myths of prophets and favored peoples and fate. Look at the crazy conservative church in your town, that preaches homophobia and anti-science and supports Israel because of the Armageddon prophecy. Look at the liberal Christian church down the street from you that has the nice Vacation Bible School and puts on happy plays for the older kids, and also teaches that one day you will stand before a great god and be judged. Look at your family members who blithely believe in death as a mini-apocalypse, in which they will be magically translated into another realm, again to be judged.

“It's the very same rot, the poison of religion that twists minds away from reality and fastens them on hellish bogeymen. They're demented fuckwits, every one, and the big lie rests right on the fundamental beliefs of supernaturalism and deities, not on the ephemera of one crank's bizarre interpretations
.
“And to the next person who quotes Matthew 24:36 at me: you're part of the problem, too.”

Homophobia and Anti-science being preached as doctrine? Fear of homosexuals? Science as evil? These blanket accusations are the mark of dogmatic hatred being preached from the altar of Atheism. Homosexuality is now a practice, once universally regarded as deviant, which is being guarded religiously by these evangelical Atheists; its usefulness is as a demonstration of omni-tolerance of the Atheo-Left, a tolerance of everything deviant but not of anything theological. In fact, the Atheo-Left can declare itself the savior-protectors of this class of "victims", a moral highpoint in their self-created moral system. So Homosexuality is valuable to Atheism.

And anti-science is Atheo-dogma-speak for holding the religious cant of evolution in abeyance, not for any antipathy for real science which is not at issue. When a dogmatist such as Meyer spews such falseness and attributes moral meaning to it, it is a sure sign that rationality is not involved in any meaningful fashion in his belief system / worldview.

The “reality” espoused by Meyer has no rational defense, and therefore it cannot be Truth, much less religious Truth as required by the absolutes of Atheism. Why is it that evangelical Atheists should have such painful twists in their shorts? After all, they merely “have no deity belief”, to hear them tell it.

So why is it that whatever they think goes on inside churches makes them so bilious? Is it fear of punishment in a lake of fire? Is it the existence of a moral code that they did not make up themselves? Is it the threat to their own presumed superiority and eliteness? Is it actual non-rational reality and worldviews that irritate them? Or is it their own non-rational “reality” which must be defended?

A non-existent deity cannot punish them: it’s just worms after death according to M.M.O’Hair. So it can’t be punishment which doesn’t even exist that bothers them.

Is it the fear of the actual existence of an objective moral code, one which they did not personally make up? Possibly, but that also couples with their own personal eliteness – the conclusion that they know best, and the rest of humanity is composed of fools (“demented fuckwits” according to Meyer). This type of eliteness is discriminatory classism at its most transparent. It is the potential loss of eliteness, not the problem of morality, which seems to be more precious to the Atheist, and in need of constant defense.

Are they irritated by actual non-rational arguments, or are their own arguments devoid of rational content? Since the arguments made by Meyer and such do not even make logical claims but rather depend on direct claims of mere possession of rationality without even attempting to demonstrate that any claim is logically valid, then no, it is not rational content which is the issue. To the contrary, Meyer depends on Ad Hominens almost entirely when referring to antithetical authors and their texts.

Is it the threat to their own anti-rational worldviews which is the problem? I think that at bottom, this might be key. Losing the claim of “rationality” for their own worldviews would dash their belief systems to dust, not to mention their self-esteem. And along with this loss would be the accompanying loss of all the other perceived perqs of Atheism: loss of the supposed eliteness of their intellects; loss of the validity of their personal morality, and the necessity of either an absolute morality beyond their control or no morality at all, an admission they are loath to make.

The constant bleating of the supposed rationality of the Atheist position in the presence of no evidence to that effect is perhaps the most obvious characteristic of modern Atheism. Yet, there is seemingly no interest in discerning any internal non-coherences in Atheist positions, or in Humanist positions for that matter. The example of Humanist condemnations of non-Humanists on the one hand, and declaring themselves to be tolerant and compassionate on the other hand, is demonstrative of the lack of self-analysis which the Atheo-Humanists ever engage themselves. Self-unawareness of both personal positions and intellectual positons, their content and consequences, seems to define Atheists in general. And when one does finally become self-aware of the content and consequence of personal beliefs, analyzes them and changes them in view of their rational errors, he is excommunicated from the band and declared heretical by virtue of insanity ( a la Antony Flew).

Atheism is a religion in every sense of the word; it preaches dogmatic cant under the cover of such mantras as fighting “anti-science” and “homophobia”. It disciplines its heretics with excommunication and personal defilement. It ignores rational arguments against it, but launches campaigns of unscientific sloganeering in order to make converts to its posed scientific false-front. Atheism comes with no morality attached, but Atheists make moral pronouncements constantly. Their moral condemnations are emitted from their presumption of their eliteness. And their eliteness is dependent upon a presumption of a rational base for their Atheism, a base which does not exist.

Atheism is a rational fail. Accordingly, it is a moral fail.

PZ Watch 04.30.11 Reasons To Be Arrogant

PZ finds a justification for Atheist arrogance – in an opinion article in the Washington Post. Says PZ:

”Read the latest from Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman. Are we smug and arrogant? Damned right, and with good reason.”

Good reason? What is it that Paul and Zuckerman wrote? Well, it wasn’t a piece that directs one to any actual, you know, facts. They make airy claims of the superiority of Atheists as determined by a slew of undocumented “studies” which they say prove that Atheists are more ethical than non-Atheists. For additional clarity: undocumented studies are meaningless. What these two produced, and the WaPo printed, was an opinion piece biased with unsupported claims that suggest scientific rigor, yet actually provide zero facts and zero pointers to the sources. This Appeal To Authority doesn’t even name the authorities.

Consider this factoid which is presented as evidence that Atheists are more ethical:

”Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison.”

and,

” Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.”

Let’s see. No reference for that data; the suggestion is that religious populations are more muderous. But the inference is being drawn from possibly acausal but co-incidental phenomena. Were the same conclusions drawn about the size of black populations in these countries and states corellating with murders, violence and prison populations, the inference would be disallowed, regardless of any real causal connection.

But back to PZ. There is no piece of news or study that will receive any critical scrutiny by PZ, if it supports – however superficially and irrationally – the cause of Leftism and Atheism. PZ needs no reason for being smug and arrogant, he just is. And he will explain that arrogance is actually an ethical state.

I cannot imagine wanting any child to be taught by such a poor thinker.

PZ Watch 04.16.11

The photograph of a small statue of Jesus on the Cross in a container of urine (called Piss Christ) has been attacked in France, with some damage and according to some reports demolished. PZ has taken his customary stance, labelling the Christian attackers as Barbarians, and using the occasion to justify his own destruction of a Christian artifact. Ironically PZ has just recently defended the burning of the Qur'an as free speech. But the destruction of the Atheist artifact strikes PZ as just wrong. It is religious intolerance akin to the Taliban's destruction of the giant Buddhas which were carved out of a cliff in Afghanistan.

Says PZ:

"I don't want to hear another word from Catholics about my destruction of a mass-produced cracker. Their extremists use violence and the destruction of private property to deface a work of art in a museum."

The image of Piss Christ is available on computers around the globe; it can be printed in photo quality; it likely will never pass from our society until our society has utterly failed and disappeared. Like PZ's destruction, the act was symbolic. Quite likely the artist Andres Serrano still has the negative and possibly copies.

PZ, on the other hand, claims that the photo is not irreligious and that it looks kinda nice to him:

"It's not even a particularly anti-religious work — that luminous golden glow is as reverential as the bloody, gory, suffering Christ figures mounted in Catholic churches all around the world."

PZ's hypocrisy has floated straight to the top, as does all things PZ. It's fine to destroy religious artifacts unless the religion is Atheism: then it is violence and the destruction of private property. Interestingly, stealing an artifact from a private organization during public attendance, wrestling with the protectors of the artifact, and then publicly destroying it... well that's exactly what PZ and his pet Atheists did.

The only difference is that the wafer did not attack Atheism, nor did it demean Atheism, it had no conceivable connection to Atheism. The Piss Christ was a direct attack on Christianity in a most onerous way. And so was PZ's attack on Christianity. What PZ and followers can't handle is the same, in reverse.

For the PZ Atheists, attacking a wafer is a courageous act of superior moral rectitude, while the attack on the photograph is sheer barbarism.

PZ Watch 03.17.11

[Note: For some reason I am unable to include videos right now. Here is the URL.

PZ takes on William Lane Craig:

“What's amazing here is that Christians are actually impressed with Craig's millimeter-deep, reason-free handwaving. Ha ha, you scientific smartie-pants, you can't use science to prove you're not a simulation on a computer of a brain in a vat that was created five minutes ago with false memories of your life, so therefore, Jesus. Never mind that science doesn't deal in proofs. Never mind that Craig's religion can't prove it either, except by blind obdurate asseveration. Never mind that those are all non-questions, non-issues, irrelevant sophomoric wanking.”

Actually the question was from Atheist Peter Atkins: “Give examples of things that cannot be proven by science”. Sophomoric wanking? From Atkins? And the very first response from Craig was science itself: being presupposed on other unprovable axioms, science cannot verify its own validity.

PZ’s response is first an Ad Hominem Abusive (stupid Christians); followed by a Red Herring (“science doesn’t deal in proofs” – yes PZ, that is the point: science has limitations); followed by a Tu Quoque (Christians: you can't provide material evidence either); wrapping up with a Red Herring Denial (non-questions, etc - well, Lane didn't ask the question, he was answering the question which was asked by the Atheist).

“In science, we're used to incremental progress and revision of our ideas. Evidence is our currency, it's how we progress and it's what gets results. It is a category error, however, to think that the way to address free-floating word salad and flaming nonsense is to take the scalpel of reason and empiricism and slice into it, looking for definable edges. No, what you do is look over the snot-ball of self-referential piffle, note that it has no tenable connection to reality, and drop-kick it into the rec room, where the kids can play with it, but no one should ever take it seriously.”

Reasserting Scientism as their religion, evidence as their dogma, and results being the Naturalist’s defining object, PZ asserts that anything else is self-referential without so much as a single shred of hallowed Evidence to show that this is the case. He denies any connection with reality (No First Principles need apply), and continues with his proud style of Ad Hominem Abusive, which actually is the purpose of the post in the first place, and last place.

Another URL for Craig.

PZ Watch 03.03.11

PZ’s premise that dead babies are just meat is threatened by the Heartbeat test, which PZ discusses with his usual clarity: ridicule. But see if you can find a clear ethical or logical argument in his post, and let me know. I could not.

ADDENDUM:
I should have read further down. Here is PZ's argument:

And the bill is ridiculous. They want to prohibit all abortions of embryos that have a detectable heartbeat…but 1) heartbeat isn't a valid measure of personhood, and 2) pragmatically, it shuts down almost all abortions. The heart starts beating at approximately one month after fertilization; the woman may not have even noticed more than a delayed period at that time, and the early symptoms of some water retention and possibly morning sickness are unreliable. There will be many women who are responsible and want to end a pregnancy as early as possible who will be denied a first trimester abortion because it was too late when they were diagnosed!

Responsible women want the death of their progeny early on, that is the argument. Well, that and "personhood" is the milestone to shoot for, not life itself. Life is of no value - dead babies = meat, etc. So the Atheist defines "personhood" however is convenient for the eugenic termination of living humans in the unfortunate stage of development where they cannot fight back. It can be argued, and has been, that personhood doesn't occur until early adulthood, which is the stage where society's investment in the individual coincides with the individual's ability to contribute. Those without ability to contribute have no value at all. Hence the non-value of embryonic humans.

A side issue: if dead babies are just meat as PZ has declared, then surely PZ (who is not a vegetarian) would not be opposed to eating them, one would think. So does he? It would be a waste and sin against the planet not to. And the elderly too, although the elderly would be tough and stringy, like Mexican roping steers. Dead babies might be like veal, though, but without the social stigma of eating veal.

Quote of the Day 01.22.11

PZ Myers:

"Gosnell is precisely the kind of butcher the pro-choice movement opposes. No one endorses bad medicine and unrestricted, unregulated, cowboy surgery like Gosnell practiced — what he represents is the kind of back-alley deadly hackery that the anti-choice movement would have as the only possible recourse, if they had their way. If anything, the Gosnell case is an argument for legal abortion."

So opposing abortions is the same as approving butchery? This is blamed on Pro-Life?

Here is some more information, which PZ might have waited for, but didn't:

"The Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions."

No, it turns out that a woman's right to butcher her child is what is important to the Atheo-Left, not protecting them from chop shops. This butchery was allowed to occur specifically because of the Left's craving for the Right To Butcher Babies.

And again, here is PZ's take on the gore generated:

"You want to make me back down by trying to inspire revulsion with dead baby pictures? I look at them unflinchingly and see meat. And meat does not frighten me."

And yes PZ does deplore the dead women. But not the babies that were delivered in the late third trimester - alive - and then killed after squirming on the table. Babies are just meat, you see.

PZ Watch 01.21.11

PZ:

"Secondly, the standard bullying tactics of waving bloody fetuses might cow the squeamish, but I'm a biologist. I've guillotined rats. I've held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors. I've used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog. I've opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I've been elbow deep in blood, I've split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle. I've extracted the brains of mice…with a pair of pliers. I've scooped brains out of buckets, I've counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

You want to make me back down by trying to inspire revulsion with dead baby pictures? I look at them unflinchingly and see meat. And meat does not frighten me."

PZ does not even connect with any single particle of compassion. And why should he? He has already evaluated people, and placed them into ranges of values. Those with no value on the PZ scale are just "meat" to PZ. How do you rank on the PZ eugenic scale? The thing to remember here is that "meat does not frighten" PZ. And the method of turning people into meat doesn't touch him at all, either. The only subjects that might interest him would be which people should be butchered into meat, and whether, as meat, they should be eaten.

PZ Watch 01.19.11

Apparently someone created a set of questions that Atheo-Leftists won’t answer:

(a) Do you believe that a newborn baby is fully human? Yes/No

(b) Do you believe that a newborn baby is a person? Yes/No

(c) Do you believe that a newborn baby has a right to life? Yes/No

(d) Do you believe that every human person has a duty towards newborn babies, to refrain from killing them? Yes/No

(e) Do you believe that killing a newborn baby is just as wrong as killing an adult? Yes/No

James Randi declared, with PZ’s approval:

”I will not respond to such a heavily biased set of questions, and I could not do so without providing extensive explanations for my answers. The "quiz" is short, but the answers would be far too involved and lengthy.”

So the answer is apparently not “yes”. It is "no, because I have my reasons".

PZ responds thus:

”The dehumanizing aspect of the so-called pro-life position is the flattening of the complexity of humanity and personhood, and its reduction to nothing more than possession of a specific set of chromosomes. To regard a freshly fertilized zygote as the full legal, ethical, and social equivalent of a young woman diminishes the woman; it does not elevate the zygote, which is still just a single cell. It is that fundamentalist Christian view, shallow and ignorant as it is, that is ultimately the corrosive agent in our culture, since it demands unthinking obedience to a rigid dogma rather than an honest evaluation of reality, and it harms the conscious agents who actually create and maintain our culture.

My position is one that demands we respect an organism for what it is, not what it isn't. It recognizes that an epithelial cell shed from the lining of my colon is less valuable than a gamete is less valuable than a zygote is less valuable than a fetus is less valuable than a newborn. It does not imply that one must still adhere to the black & and white thinking of the IDiots and draw a line, and say that on one side of the line, everything is garbage that can be destroyed without concern, and on the other side, everything is sacred and must be preserved at all costs.

A seed is not a tree. That doesn't imply that I'm on a crusade to destroy seeds.”

The question was not about seeds, it was about saplings. And even then the eugenists cannot acknowledge anything other than their right to assign value to humans at every point along the natural human journey (this particular point being a newborn baby).

"To regard a freshly fertilized zygote as the full legal, ethical, and social equivalent of a young woman diminishes the woman".

This is only true in the judgmental world of PZ. And what about older women? Or just-born women (that's what the questions addressed). Or Judeo-Christian Women? I doubt that many people, even Atheo-Leftists, want PZ to assign them their value as human / not human / part human, and whether they are disposable under his judgment of their personhood. I suspect Judeo-Christians in particular would not fare well in the rankings. After all, PZ eschews tolerance of such inferior beings.

An interesting thing about Atheo-Leftists. They shriek about inequality and demand egalitarian reduction so that everyone (the masses anyway) are equal. Then they declare that they can determine the changing value of every human as that human proceeds through the human life cycle. There is no rationality whatsoever in the progressive struggle for power. Nor is there any morality that can't be changed in a flash, depending on the need, for example the concept of what constitutes "dehumanizing", and "flattening the complexity" of what is allowed to be called personhood.

I was recently given a single apple seed by an acquaintance. He said,

“it is easy to determine how many seeds are in an apple. It is impossible to determine how many apples are in a seed.”

Or, one might add, how many future trees, or how much nourishment they might provide.

When Irrationality Dominates Your Worldview...

...this is what you get.

The Arizona shooter has been identified, and we know a little bit about him, specifically that he was irrational. But that's not surprising.

Here's what PZ Meyers had to say, before he knew any facts:

I'll take a wild guess here. The scumbag who committed this crime has been caught; I'll bet he'll turn out to be a Teabagger who listens to a lot of AM talk radio. Holy crap. This was Sarah Palin's idea of a clever campaign earlier this year: she had select Democrats, including Gabrielle Giffords, targeted with a gunsight symbol.

What a vile creature. Perhaps she ought to consider not inciting the deranged assholes who follow her.

This is false; the campaign target was on the state, not Giffords. It is also false that Palin had any influence on the shooter. This jump to vile Ad Hominem is not indicative of a thoughtful, rational demeanor. It is Atheo-Leftist hatred and venom let loose before any facts were known.

And from the Corruption of Christianity side of the coin, the Westboro Church celebrates the massacre:

"The Westboro Baptist Church has declared that Jared Lee Laughner, who shot 18 persons, killing 6 on Saturday, was doing God's will.

In announcing that its church members will picket the funerals of those slain, the Phelps clan gave thanks to God for the violence and proclaimed that is is praying "for your destruction, more shooters, more dead carcasses piling up, young, old, leader and commoner — all."

The Westboro Church is a single famiy of deranged and dangerous and corrupt people who hide behind a false view of Christianity to further their psychotic beliefs. Their views are as false as PZ's, from the opposite end of the political spectrum where vicious irrationality hangs out... at both ends.

Quote of the Day 10.01.10

PZ defines blasphemy:

"That's blasphemy — not just a random act of desecration, but an intentional act directed at discomfiting the faithful."

Ever oh-so-proud of his blasphemy and his band of blasphemers, PZ is always ready to spit on believers:

"...every day is Blasphemy Day for me, and I'm a walking talking affront to god."

PZ Watch 08.18.10

A couple of days back, PZ went off on Ray Kurzweil. One of the things PZ said has bothered me in several different aspects. PZ said this:

”To simplify it so a computer science guy can get it, Kurzweil has everything completely wrong. The genome is not the program; it's the data. The program is the ontogeny of the organism, which is an emergent property of interactions between the regulatory components of the genome and the environment, which uses that data to build species-specific properties of the organism.”

To try to interpret this, let's organize the thoughts in that sentence:

1. Ontogeny builds species-specific properties of the organism using genome data.

2. Ontogeny gets this ability as an emergent property, [ O ].

3. [ O ] comes from “genome regulatory components” plus environment.

Assuming that the environment contains no instructions for [ O ] since the environment has no regulatory component (it just is - exists without meaning), then the environment would provide merely data, used by the “regulatory components” of the genome. So the genome does, in fact – based solely on PZ’s input – contain the program. Or perhaps it contains code elements that self-assemble into program(s) for specific targeted regions, after modifying itself based on environmental data inputs.

Either way, if what PZ is saying is accurate, then his attack on Kurzweil (for this reason) does not stand up: the code is in the genome.

Taken purely from PZ’s description, the emergent property [ O ] sounds suspiciously like self-modifying code. Or if not that, then a seriously complex decision set that takes into account environmental variables of all types before making an organism. (And modifying the instructions based on the environmental input?)

Most emergent properties are accidents. For example, hardness, clarity, and beauty are accidental side effects of compressing carbon into diamonds. The emergent properties that evolutionists like to claim, are not accidental in the same sense as secondary effects. Emergent properties such as [ O ] in PZ’s scheme are essential to the formation of the organism. So in the case of current genomic theory a la PZ, the organism is the accident: the secondary effect of the emergent properties of the genomic code and the environmental data.

The idea that the organism is the secondary effect is OK it seems to me, except for two things. First, how did all that get pounded into a molecule before there were organisms for the molecule to create as secondary effects? Second issue, that the environment is a huge variable which is not defined, nor is its interaction capability defined, nor its limits, if any, defined. It remains a mystery, just like the content of the genome, and the question of how proteins know how to assemble into organisms, much less bring them to life.

PZ’s explanation is just a single sentence though, and not too much can be expected from that brevity. But, of course, the sentence should support the original contention, which is that Kurzweil is “completely wrong” in thinking that the genome contains the program, and it does not support that contention.