Ophelia Benson: "Everything is YOUR FAULT! You have a PENIS."

Would that this had the honesty of deliberate satire –

Butterflies and Wheels was established in 2002 and has (not surprisingly) evolved since then. At the beginning it focused mainly on various kinds of pseudoscience and epistemic relativism, aka postmodernism. The latter prompted an increasing focus on moral or cultural relativism and a defense of universalism and human rights. This in turn led to concern with the chief opponent of universalism and human rights, which is religion. This then led to interest in the backlash against overt atheism.

Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s a Münchhausean self-appraisal from an intellect that’s a cold carcass on a slab having overdosed on way too much mind-killing belief.

It’s basically a whatever’s-in-the-cupboard stew of lofty concepts, more designed to confuse than enlighten, yet leave an overall flattering aftertaste in those not prepared to digest properly. Ms. Benson (or for the sake of consistency, just “cunt”, if I am to stay in keeping with her preconceptions of the Unbelievers she forces on her readership) promotes herself a lot as a “skeptic”, and the impression given by conflating epistemic relativism1 with pseudoscience (which is apparently bad) certainly intends to support this.

Unfortunately, it flies in the face of the basic reality that epistemic relativism is the very foundation upon which she erects her entire temple of specious codswallopery. Consider this nonsense from The Baboon King she allows to pass on her blog without so much as raising an eyebrow –

  1. PZ Myers says:
    September 30, 2011 at 11:34 am

    Posting reams of hysterical posts demanding a boycott of Richard Dawkins in retribution for his alleged ‘misogyny’ was not only extremely damaging to the atheist cause and community, but did feminism no favors either.

    Which did not happen.
    The only pattern here is that every event in this affair gets inflated into absurdity by the misogynists.

A black lie that the Naked One will contort with epistemic relativism to in fact state is a truth, and that his pet princess’ rant to the contrary was “taken entirely out of context”. This proclamation was allowed to pass with no inkling of protest from Ophelia – let alone her asking whether the Elevator Guy incident itself was an affair that got inflated into absurdity by the misandrists.

This convenience store approach to reality is highlighted quite nicely in Ophelia’s more recent offering –

A man generally cannot know

See especially the extract in footnote 1 from the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Delicious. Freethoughtblogs style “freethought” in action, and that’s just the blog title. But the part of real interest is this –

That was that, but I saw this morning that James had flagged up his recent FK post on the subject on Abbie Smith’s thread (the one full of “cunt” and “fucking bitch” and all the rest of the thoughtful, non-sexist vocabulary), so I read/skimmed it.

Quite amazing. Cunt Ophelia just can’t get past a mention of Abbie without descending into this gutteral, snarling rage, flogging to death cherry-picked irrelevancies, and avoiding any actual relevancies, in a misogynistic hissy fit to, yet again, pour a bucket of shit on Abbie for her own mindless2 reasons.

Ophelia, using her very best epistemic relativism, insists on convincing the planet that Abbie exists for only one reason – to promote gender hatred via applied linguistic rape. And that’s all she does. Ever. Because that is all Ophelia ever says she does. Memetically, this is a twig on the same branch as “niggers have thick skulls and want to rape your white women” and “Jews need the blood of infants to make matzos for Passover”. I certainly can’t see any difference.

How mighty liberal, enlightened and tolerant.

You are a fucking misogynist cunt Ophelia. Your brain is a can of ball bearings on a paint shaker spouting gibberish to suit. You sell your brand of schizophrenic hatred to us as your epistemically relativist truth and demand to be taken seriously.

In other words, you are a perfect fit for The Naked Emperor’s Crisis Factory.

The blog’s which caused this current cretinous meltdown by Ophelia are from James Onen of Freethought Kampala, a guy in a real tough part of the world where people have enough on their plates without having to fabricate extra problems out of trivia to feed their own narcissism. The two main items are –

Elevatorgate

Elevatorgate – Part 2 – The Failure of Skepticism

Both are articulate, well reasoned, well researched and more objective than any of the pink pudgy things will ever give credit for. Both are recommended reading, and are especially good as an introduction for those that have not kept up with this idiocy and/or are of the opinion that this issue is not a serious one. And the irony of Ophelia fighting “backlash” against atheism, as mentioned in her about section, is of course lost on her now that she is one of the bulldozer drivers.

Special Bonus Ophelia (7th Oct.)

Ophelia being civil to Adrienne Myers over the latter’s gender treachery –

.

Sideshow distraction –

The things you find rummaging around in Ophelia’s panty drawer looking for something sniffable that won’t turn your nose hairs to dust. Found this –

http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2006/cartoons/

Now the only way Ophelia can comment on that issue without being a hypocrite (not that it’s ever a concern) is to show full support for the imams.

1 – Cesspit of lies: “Factual relativism or epistemic relativism is a mode of reasoning which extends relativism and subjectivism to factual matter and reason. In factual relativism the facts used to establish the truth or falsehood of any statement are understood to be relative to the perspective of those proving or falsifying the proposition.”

Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy: “The thesis that what may be a proper claim to know something when made by one group or culture may be otherwise when made by a different group or culture. In some cases this is harmless and banal (people who have looked and seen may know things that people who have not do not know). In other cases it can be highly contentious, as when there are claims made for specific cultural, religious, or female ways of knowing things, unavailable to outsiders.”

2 – in the antithetical sense to mindful, the exact opposite of being –

attentive, aware, or careful (usually followed by of ): mindful of one’s responsibilities.