Tell the new, new atheism to fuck off.
This is an extended rumination on some Freethought literature I have mentioned previously. It contains a lot of very pertinent, and in my opinion, critical points that address the why and the how of godlessness, skepticism and Freethought running off the rails as disastrously as they have over the past few years.
These are all points aimed squarely at PZ Myers as he is the prime corrupter of the movement, but it applies equally to all of the other alpha-baboons that have set up shop at the Crisis Factory that is bent on making criminals and pariahs out of anyone that raises a voice in dissent.
Most of the questions contained herein have been framed in various ways in prior posts. This is essentially a collation and digest. Myers refusal and inability to address any of these questions, leading instead to Myers resorting to a steadily escalating stream of personal abuse, slander and accusation – all without even the flimsiest evidence being presented – labelling me a misogynist, (potential) rapist, woman beater, sexual dysfunctional and deviate and worse, culminating in equating me to Dave Mabus and stirring up his baboons to thoughts of involving police, private investigators and denunciations to atheist organisations, as well as indirect threats to both my family and real world associates. All on the basis of rumour, hearsay and Chinese whispers – and malice prompted by the intense dislike of difficult questions he knows he can’t answer.
Here are some rudimentary questions to ask The Naked Emperor directly –
How do you come to entertain the notion that you are a “Freethinker”?
“Freethinker” is now suffering the same fate as other terms that have been bastardised beyond repair and no longer bear any relation their original meaning. Other terms to suffer this fate have been liberal, conservative, atheist, libertarian and the list keeps growing.
It is worth reviewing what Freethought actually is and a nice summary has been put together in clear and simple language by a group called SKP Freethinkers – a summary which has since been incorporated into a pamphlet currently being distributed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Here are some extracts. The full item can be read here.
A Freethinker is a person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established Belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics, secular humanists and rationalists.
No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed1, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation is invalid and orthodoxy2 is no guarantee of truth.
1 – creed
1. any system, doctrine, or formula of religious belief, as of a denomination.2. any system or codification of belief or of opinion.
2 – or·tho·dox
1. of, pertaining to, or conforming to the approved form of any doctrine, philosophy, ideology, etc.2. of, pertaining to, or conforming to beliefs, attitudes, or modes of conduct that are generally approved.
A double fail already by only the second paragraph. The consistent absence of evidence or citation in all of Freethoughtblogs hellfire sermons leave faith and belief as the only mechanisms to support the relentless accusations and denunciations.
While here, it is probably appropriate to also include the definition for bigot –
a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.
It is fair to say that the whole raison d’être of Freethoughtblogs is the denunciation of individuals for voicing unapproved opinion. Most notable recent example of bigotry denouncing others’ opinions is, strangely enough, seen in abuse aimed at a small time gelato shop owner over alleged bigotry.
What Is A Freethinker’s Basis For Knowledge?
Freethinkers are naturalistic. Truth is the degree to which a statement corresponds with reality. Reality is limited to that which is directly perceivable through our natural senses or indirectly ascertained through the proper use of reason…
…Arguments based on faith, authority or ad hominem character attacks are unacceptable…
This is a good representative selection of commentary from Freethoughtblogs acolytes, and there are countless thousands elsewhere. There is not a single example that does not base itself on either faith, authority or ad hominem character attacks.
…An ethical choice is rarely a simple “right and wrong” decision. Most moral questions involve a conflict of values, requiring a careful use of reason. Obedient conformity to the dictates of another mind is supremely immoral and very dangerous…
The Freethoughtblogs reality space can only really be described as one of a Manichean dualism – clearly demarcated into non-negotiable black and white, good and evil. This world is split into that of “enlightened”, conscious men and misogynists/rapists; eternally suffering “violated nun” feminists and gender traitors/collaborators. There are no grey areas – and once branded you are branded for life. A deeper and more accurate paralled is to that of Nietzschean master/slave morality – where Freethoughtblogs is initiating a slave revolt at the insensitive masters who hurt their feelings and are fabricating “evil” as justification for the uprising. Slave morality strives to win equity by destroying the liberty of those that (justifiably) make them feel inferior and worthless.
This dualism is actively promoted via personality cult machinations of the alpha-baboons such as PZ Myers, Rebecca Watson and Ophelia Benson who demand obedient conformity to their ideological demands. Reason has no place in this environment. This is a madrassa insulated from all external data that may conflict with approved groupthink. Fail.
Why Are Freethinkers Opposed To Religion
Freethinkers are convinced that religious claims are false—they have not withstood the tests of evidence and reason. Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition.
Most freethinkers consider religion to be not only untrue, but harmful. It has been used to justify war, slavery, sexism, racism, mutilations, intolerance, and oppression of minorities.
This follows from the previous extract. Whilst Freethoughtblogs may superficially claim to be godless and secular, they are overwhelmingly driven by the pseudo-religious impulses of the personality cult and ideological dogma – and demand a religious degree of unquestioning subservience to established ideology. In real terms, to most actual Freethinkers, there is no distinction between this and the actual religious impulse. The fruits of the Holy Inquisition, as an example, are not all that different from the former East German Stasi when taken to logical extremes. They are both driven by the same kind of unreason.
Freethoughtblogs continuously promotes untruths (e.g. atheist misogyny) by virtue of the fact that many of their claims are hearsay or gossip, usually exaggerated for maximum impact, and are devoid of any evidence or citation that can withstand independent scrutiny. This can be equated to secular superstition, repetition of unsubstantiated allegations to the point they become tacit truths. This practice is deserving of the status of old wive’s tales. This is an absolute betrayal of Clifford’s Credo –
“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
This is a massive fail.
Do Freethinkers Have A Particular Political Persuasion?
No, freethought is a philosophical, not a political, position.
Freethought today embraces adherents of virtually all political persuasions, including capitalists, libertarians, socialists, communists, Republicans, Democrats, liberals and conservatives. There is no connection, for example, between atheism and communism. Some freethinkers, such as Adam Smith and Ayn Rand, were staunch capitalists; and there have been communistic groups which were deeply religious, such as the early Christian church.
This is perhaps the greatest fail of them all. Freethought, and the often overlapping subsets of atheism and skepticism, are not ideological positions. To impose ideology on Freethought removes the “Free” – there is an artificial constraint imposed which restricts thinking. Ideological Freethought as a concept is an oxymoron. To proclaim yourself a Freethinker and demand adherence to ideological beliefs is hypocrisy. It is a position that necessitates cognitive dissonance to accept – universally recognized as an unhealthy, potentially hazardous, frame of mind to place yourself in.
Freethoughtblogs seeks to impose its own style of ideology on all aspects of secularism. This ideology is a very unhealthy mix of pseudo-Islamist spontaneous mass outrage at ideological heresies, and a strange quasi-Calvinist neo-puritanism that seeks to bring fear back to human sexuality and gender relations – all framed around a false “liberal” posture that is more correctly described as moral absolutist social authoritarianism where all individual action must be scrutinized and approved by the ingroup Soviet – where failure to receive group approval is punishable by ritualized public shaming and even shunning. The extent to which this ideological authoritarianism can breakdown any notion of Freethought can be seen in recent internecine squabbling over use of the term “lady” and the evils of cartoon characters using pink dialogue bubbles.
Is Atheism/Humanism A Religion?
Atheism is not a belief. It is the “lack of belief” in god(s). Lack of faith requires no faith. Atheism is indeed based on a commitment to rationality, but that hardly qualifies it as a religion.
Freethinkers apply the term religion to belief systems which include a supernatural realm, deity, faith in “holy” writings and conformity to an absolute creed.
How can a point of view that is defined only by the absence of a characteristic (i.e. belief in supernatural beings) possibly have an ideology? To Freethinkers, it is readily evident that it can’t. Hardened, inflexible ideologues on the other hand simply view it as unconquered territory to be seized. Most of Freethoughtblogs seem to be convinced that atheism must be bound to ideology, but none more so than PZ Myers himself. He has even contrived a term of derision for those that object to the idea of ideological atheism – dictionary atheists. Quote, in true Freethoughtblogs style –
Boy, I really do hate these guys. You’ve got a discussion going, talking about why you’re an atheist, or what atheism should mean to the community, or some such topic that is dealing with our ideas and society, and some smug wanker comes along and announces that “Atheism means you lack a belief in gods. Nothing more. Quit trying to add meaning to the term.” As if atheism can only be some platonic ideal floating in virtual space with no connections to anything else; as if atheists are people who have attained a zen-like ideal, their minds a void, containing nothing but atheism, which itself is nothing. Dumbasses.
Much emotional opinion follows, but very little solid reasoning as to why Myers is right and the entire atheist movement is wrong. This is to be expected when ideology and not intellect becomes the dominating factor in any ecosystem. Intellect may be challenged, ideology must be obeyed. Period. This diatribe from Myers to subordinate atheism to his will may otherwise be described as a demand for conformity to an absolute creed.
Isn’t A Plurality Of Ideas Unsettling To Humanity?
Yes. That is the only way we will have progress. A multiplicity of individuals thinking, free from restraints of orthodoxy, allows ideas to be tested, discarded or adopted. The totalitarianism of religious absolutes chokes progress.
The final piece of the extracts pretty much lays it out clearly on the table – ideology is antithetical to Freethought. It has no place. It is a memetic parasite that if allowed to take root, will kill the host. Freethought will cease to be Freethought. This is not a negotiable position – it is a concrete reality. Freethought can only survive free from constraint and in a fully diverse ecosystem. The inevitable conflicts that arise in such a system are what fuels Freethought’s growth and maintains its health. The banal homogeneity promoted by Freefromthoughtblogs will, conversely, starve Freethought of all its vitality and destroy it.
What is clearly evident from all this is that Freethoughtblogs has absolutely nothing in common with the Freethought movement. Freethoughtblogs is in fact its very antithesis – and any attempt to merge the two will be fatal for genuine Freethought.
Given that Freethoughtblogs has absolutely no relation to the actual Freethought movement, why is there no disclaimer to that effect posted anywhere on FTB?
So PZ, or über-baboon or whatever, given that Freethoughtblogs has absolutely nothing in common with the Freethought movement, shouldn’t you at least have the decency to let people know? There is a genuine risk that some people, especially the novice de-converts out there, may stumble across FTB and mistake it for the genuine Freethought movement. It is potentially enough to spook them back to their faith of origin. Really, much of the absolute mind-rotting garbage you let loose on an unsuspecting world is difficult enough to deal with even for hardened Cynics that have seen it all.
Quite aside frome everything else, appropriating the moniker in the manner you have, without any clarifications or warnings or disclaimers, is highly misleading, even fraudulent. It’s probably technically OK if you use it as a trademark, but again common decency should dictate that you clearly state it is only a trademark, and not in any way related to the genuine Freethought movement. Here, I’ll even help –
Freethoughtblogs™
FTB is an independently operated yellow journal in the proud tradition of William Randolph Hearst and public spectacle sideshow a la P.T. Barnum. As such, we must take this opportunity to disclaim that we have any relation or connection to either the genuine Freethought movement or any Age of Enlightenment legacy. We are in fact antithetical, and hostile, to both, and should for any reason we create the illusion that we may in fact be related, we wish to apologise in advance as any such connection will be entirely unintentional, not to mention impossible to even conceive. FTB exists solely for the purposes of injecting our ideology anywhere it is unwanted, ritualised public humiliation of ideological heretics, and turning on each other in internecine bloodbaths when things get slow with the previous. Thank you.
Come on Myers, it’s time for you to make the first honest move in your life – just admit to the above. You’ll feel much better for it.
grey lining 
November 27, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Unusually for me, I’ve had a few drinks on a Sunday night, so I didn’t have the patience to read the whole post (I will tomorrow, I promise!). But I would like to make a comment about the “freethinker” term.
In pisses me off.
When I hear someone say “freethinker”, I immediately assume they mean “independent thinker/individual”. It always makes me laugh, because no one, IMHO, is a freethinker in that regard.
I will be the first to admit that my own opinions and views are influenced by those who I have respect for. Sometimes I am too easily persuaded by them, and it is something that I have learned to be on guard for.
Although I could be projecting, since I have no other data point for the workings of the human mind other than myself, I can only assume that other peoples brains work pretty much the same way as mine. That leads me to conclude that the desire to agree with the group you are a member of is as prevalent in everyone else as it is in me.
I guess that is why I am here. I found myself in vehement disagreement with the baboons so often that I had to get away and find others who understood where I was coming from. The fact that anyone who disagrees with them is set on by a lynch mob didn’t help matters. I’m one of those people who doesn’t go in much for the “me too” comments, and I only comment if I feel I have something to add or I disagree with the views being presented.
Big mistake on the baboon board.
I really tried to like those guys, I really did! I had heard such good things about Pharyngula from others I respected. It made me feel bad to come to the conclusion that they were a pack of wankers not worth my time.
I’m not a “freethinker” and neither are any of the baboons. They need to learn to accept the fact that they are fallible humans, just like everyone else.
And by “fallible”, I don’t mean “Oh – look, I got a citation wrong! Thank you for correcting me! Look how great I am, accepting a criticism! Aren’t I so much better than those pesky religious folk?”.
I mean accepting criticism about something that *matters*. That’s where the baboons fall down.
November 27, 2011 at 10:32 pm
Actual Freethought is a pretty scary thing. It means dropping all of the apron strings and diving in the abyss. Relying on nothing other than your own perceptions. There is a forgotten concept called typhos (see glossary) – it is perhaps the most important concept ever forgotten. Typhos is that which subverts reality. There is no real equivalent for the word in english – it is more than simply “nonsense”. You cannot have Freethought if you cannot understand and see typhos. You also cannot be a Freethinker if you are incapable of being wrong and accepting fallibility graciously.
This is the double whammy that precludes FTB from EVER even getting close to being partial Freethinkers. Hubris and groupthink – the exact opposite of what I said above, and the absolute essence of FTB.
That SKP page is an excellent summation though. Best I have seen in a long time. Oh, and you also have to like pansies.
November 28, 2011 at 3:57 am
Recently I listened to an interview with Gloria Steinem on NPR. She is very articulate and it was a really interesting interview. Eventually though, she made the most bizarre claim. She said that feminism is not finished until the sexes have complete “parity”. The use of the word “parity” is hers. Here she is claiming (as she explained in the interview) that men and women must be equally represented in all parts of society. Men and women should be equally represented in the work place, in politics, in the sciences, according to Steinem.
I had trouble wrapping my head around this. She said there should be as many men and women in all jobs… firefighter, soldiers, cops, nurses, writers etc. What an odd goal. I was a bit surprised that the reporter didn’t question this. How could this ever be accomplished? How could this make anyone happy? Isn’t it a better goal to ensure equal opportunity and not equal results?
I guess the answer is “no”. According to Gloria, equal results are the only acceptable solution. And indeed, I find that Steinem is not really considered very radical in feminist circles. She is mainstream on this subject.
And I find, it is this kind of thinking, this “parity” kind of thinking, that has taken over Freethoughtblogs. Some of the bloggers and most of the commenters think that the political and social goal is to make men and woman identical…. indistinguishable…. sharing 50/50 in EVERY form of power. It is a miserable utopia they are after. Disgusting on its face.
(and it is this simple opinion of mine has has caused me to be banned, called a misogynist, called a wife-beater and child abuser…. )
November 28, 2011 at 8:46 am
I think that they regard the 2 things as equivalent i.e. lack of equality of outcome in any field proves unequal opportunity. A very flawed understanding.
Does Steinem really represent the mainstream? Is that the academic or popular mainstream? Is there really anything like uniformity of opinion amongst the non rads?
November 28, 2011 at 8:50 am
I guess I really don’t know if there is uniformity in feminism on this topic. I do find that Steinem is considered fairly “mainstream” in most circles (including on NPR). I do run into the idea that exact equality of results is necessary in many places. I would probably have to get a degree in women’s studies to really know if there is uniformity on this (but I would certainly kill myself along the way).
November 28, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Steinem is just a celebrity feminist, from back when feminism may have meant something. I don’t think there is any uniformity except for the radfems.
November 28, 2011 at 4:30 pm
Dear ol’ Gloria’s principle claims to fame are:
1. She was a Playboy bunny.
2. She started MS. Magazine.
3. She highlighted the complex hypocrisy of her feminist views, and the ultimate hypocrisy of all powerful people, by dating Henry Kissinger (of all people?!), who’s response to that was something along the lines of “Power is the greatest aphrodisiac”, to which Ms. Gloria tittered like a little school girl.
Really, the world is an amazing place.
I suspect it is possible that our good friend Rebecca Watson learned a thing or three about media whoring by paying very close attention to Ms. Gloria’s methods over the years.
November 28, 2011 at 9:32 am
As far as I can tell, it has always been the dominant mindset of FFTB. These are people who hold themselves accountable for nothing in their lives and insist that they shouldn’t have to.
November 28, 2011 at 11:07 am
Yes, its largely freedom from thought. And accountability, responsibility, and having to support your stream-of-consciousness vomit with actual supporting data. It is a children’s paradise – freedom to do whatever you please and never have to face the consequences.
November 28, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Until you step on the invisible mine and the other Orcs tear you to shreds.
November 28, 2011 at 12:21 pm
I can think of lots of places I’d love to see true “parity” –
* Abattoir killing floors
* Maintenance plumbers at sewage works
* Army engineers clearing minefields and building bridges under direct fire.
There are plenty more.
November 28, 2011 at 1:49 pm
You MissOganist you! Expecting teh womyns to kill floors, maintain plumbers at sewage works, and to arm engineers clearing minefields while buidling bridges with, presumably, officers who are under direct fire.
MissOganist I say! MissOganist.
Pussy. Pussy.
NO!
November 28, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Yup. Kicks are not enough. Imagine an anti-tank mine straight up the baby cannon. They want “parity”, well step up to the plate. Don’t talk about it, do it.
November 28, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Jen Peeples is an example of an admirable feminist who does pretty much what you ask.
A very very rare example, I admit.
November 28, 2011 at 9:45 pm
But war and violence are devices of the Patriarchy. Doesn’t count. If only the world were ruled by Maggie Thatchers. What utopia!
November 28, 2011 at 3:10 pm
If there are genuine skeptical feminists in our movement, how come they havent applied scientific skepticism to the claims of feminism? I would expect skeptifem, skepchick etc to really do this kind of work. How did the fucking “patriarchy” come into existence in the first place? Did they dig into historical evidence? “Men colluding to keep women suppressed” my foot. Seriously.. how can feminism be treated as any different from other conspiracy theories like moon landing hoax, 9/11 inside job?
I believe that people do the best they can in their circumstances and environmental and other constraints, and generally speaking the world gets the way it is out of that, not by conspiracy. I am currently reading ‘The Myth of Male Power: Why Men are the disposable sex’ by Warren Farrel (from 1993), and although reviews of the book on the web arent positive (some of them are by dug-in feminists), I am finding the book quite informative. It fundamentally theorises that throughout history, men and women got into roles that worked best for the protection and continuity of their tribes/societies, and these roles were time-and-life consuming for most individuals (both sexes) to break out of. It is only in the recent century that the masses got free enough to look for an alternate way of relationships and definition of love (i.e no longer role-mate.. we want soul-mate). Note: No conspiracy so far. (As an aside, he actually has an interesting theory as to why certain sexual behaviours.. homosexuality, pre-marital sex.. were outlawed). Feminism just doesnt seem to like these ideas. Nope. Got to be the menz.
Nobody has it good all their lives. Feminists dont seem to understand that. Here’s a tiny snippet from another History book I am reading. As Franc says, we really need a famine.
The world has changed more in the past century than in the previous five thousand years. Until fairly recently, life was incredibly hard for all but about one per cent of the population. It was an endless battle against starvation, cold and ill-health. As Henry Hazlitt put it in The Conquest of
Poverty (New York, 1973):
The ancient world of Greece and Rome… was a world where houses had no chimneys, and rooms, heated in cold weather by a fire on a hearth or a fire-pan in the centre of the room, were filled with smoke whenever a fire was started, and consequently walls, ceiling and furniture were blackened and more or less covered by soot at all times; where light was supplied by smoky oil lamps which, like the houses in which they were used, had no chimneys; and where eye trouble, as a result of all this smoke, was general. Greek dwellings had no heat in winter, no adequate sanitary arrangements, and no washing facilities.
And two thousand years later, things were just as bad:
The dwellings of medieval labourers were hovels – the walls were
made of a few boards cemented with wood and leaves. Rushes and
leaves or heather made the thatch for the roof. Inside the house there
was a single room, or in some cases two rooms, not plastered and
without floor, ceiling, chimney, fireplace or bed, and here the owner,
his family and his animals lived and died. There was no sewage for the
houses, no drainage, except surface drainage for the streets, no water
supply beyond that provided by the town pump, and no knowledge of
the simplest forms of sanitation…
From I. E. Parmalee Prentice: Hunger and History, quoted by Hazlitt.
And again and again there were appalling famines. In Rome in 436 B.C. it was so bad that
thousands of starving people threw themselves into the Tiber; in England in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries there was a famine approximately every fourteen years, in one of which 20,000
people died in London alone. In our comfortable twentieth century, we have forgotten the way our ancestors lived for thousands
upon thousands of years.
November 28, 2011 at 3:32 pm
You don’t even have to look to history – contemporary Sudan or Afghanistan. Or even the US where people die every day from common, treatable ailments because they have no medical insurance.
Of course, the pudgy, pink, and entitled middle class things never have to worry about things like that. Hurt feelings are more important anyway.
November 28, 2011 at 4:41 pm
The very first time I was banned from Skepchick, which was about three years ago I think, it was because, and I paraphrase, I made everyone feel bad and brought ugliness into the wholesome environment of Skepchick.
My crime? During a couple of threads full of complaints, tears, and walls of wailing feminists carrying madly on about the serious and desperately sad state of affairs that abandoned pets face in the US, I had the audacity, the sheer gall, the blatant horribilis majorisness to ask them if perhaps they would be more social constructive spending at least half as much time worrying about homeless people, and the working poor in North Amercica as they did about abandoned fucking pets.
Well, that was that.
Banned I was for my evil badness.
November 28, 2011 at 5:01 pm
I have a guaranteed recipe to infuriate the pink and entitled –
“You wanna show what a humanitarian you are? How about you go and buy a homeless kid a sandwich?”
It works especially well if you are getting reprimanded for laughing at some kind of natural selection death (i.e. getting strangled by a hijab caught in a go-kart axle after you made is issue of your RIGHT to wear it to the attendents who were pointing out their concerns for your safety).
Gets them every time.
November 30, 2011 at 1:18 am
If they’re so concerned about abandoned pets, they can go volunteer at a no-kill animal shelter. If they’re so concerned about the representation of women, they can go out and represent themselves. HA! Who am I kidding? These people are only concerned and outraged, they don’t want to actually organize and do anything. Why, if they did that, they would have nothing to bitch and moan about!
November 30, 2011 at 1:32 am
0verlord:
Sundry sluggish slothful slick superficially showy surly superannuated slacktivist (surprisingly servile) submissive stagnant sycophantic suck-holes succinctly summarised.
December 1, 2011 at 4:29 pm
On the bright side, John, you can think about them crying over homeless pets this way:
[cue Sarah McLaughlin sitting at a piano, singing with a Sybian machine under her ass]
” millions of pets are homeless and abused….”
[cut away to a shot of men in overcrowded American Prisons eating peanut butter samwiches]
” and without your help, they may die or starve to death…”
[cut away to the girls of Skeptifem weeping and gnashing their teeth with a jar of peanut butter in their hands and a small, barking dog in their lap]
“without your contribution, what kind of world would we live in?”
Then, all of a sudden a banner rolls across the screen and it says:
“thanks to radical feminism, American women breed less, and fewer babies are born into poverty, or end up in prisons, or are raised by angry women like them.”
[Fade out as little barking dog lunges for the peanut butter jar, and the radfem smiles a serene smile as she reclines on her bed pillows…]
[Fade in and Cut to Sarah McLaughlin]
opening the door to her cupboard, and seeing only the jar of jelly sitting there. She turns her head slowly with a gradually horrified look on her face…]
[ fade out]
November 28, 2011 at 4:14 pm
[…] Ask PZ Myers: How Is It That You Can Claim To Be A Freethinker? (greylining.com) […]
November 29, 2011 at 7:30 am
Hi Franc, hi all.
I’ve been lurking for the past few weeks, back to a bit of blogging after a long break. I gave up on the science blogging community long ago, when they stopped blogging about science. Thought I’d share my assessment with you.
Most of them (and us) started up in anger pointed toward the ID/Creationist threat years and years ago. On the blog front, as I’m sure you all remember, Myers, Laden, Panda’s Thumb and the core of ScienceBlogs were doing some good work in promoting the right answer to the proposed invasion of ID into the science classroom. Soon after, the door was shut in ID’s face, creationists became far less of a threat and everyone started looking ahead. Some of us wrote about science and moved away from the constant conflict and daily, anecdotal outrages (ex: post anecdotal anti-atheist incident, make blanket statements affirming “our” victimhood). Others thrived on it.
Simple shit really: PZ got off on it. Laden got off on it. They found a new angle to keep holy rolling along with the radical/victim/neo-Puritan feminism, except this time, science isn’t behind them. They were right before, demonstrably so, and validated by the courts. Once the threat was gone, however, the desire to keep the ego-meter filled was overwhelming, so they latched on to the very bullshit you’ve been eloquently describing/skewering since the Watson fiasco. Their white-knighting afforded them the respect of other simpering, entitled, whiny, middle-class, ineffectual beta males/females, so they put together their own little butthurt schoolyard gang.
Celebrity whoring masquerading as intelligent, sensitive community. You hope that the truly impressionable never get wind of the retard repository.
December 1, 2011 at 4:16 pm
These people make Steinem look relatively harmless. But harnessing the tools of power require a willingness to do harm for the good of the “nation” or “state”.
And, on the left, the goal is always a world-state rather than nation states, they aren’t as clearly fascist as the right wingers. The agenda is ‘new’ power stuctures by overcoming ‘old’ power structures.
In other words, the agenda is internationalist, at the behest of banksters, rather than nations. Hence, there is zero freethinking involved, and 100% groupthink in adherence to internationalist agendas like mobilising and “uniting” “all women” who are “united” againt local males (patriarchs), and local power structures .
Hence, Ms.Magazine–the only magazine in the history of magazines to never accept advertising–was a tool of international agenda, pushed through the CIA.
Her version of feminism busted the unions, and lowered the working wage in America; encouraged the divorce rate ( from which the state derived taxes, legal fees and purpose), and built the subsequent social service networks of split families who contributed willing soldiers for international interests ( 30% of US troops come from exclusively single mother homes; 60% come from ‘split family’ homes; the military is overwhelmingly Africanamerican, and 72% of AfAm kids are born into fatherless households).
That’s what happens when international finance needs cheaper labor to build cheaper cars…
Hell, you don’t have to believe me–ask Bloomberg News:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a1M9EAly2hog&refer=home
“The front organization was one of the earliest and most trusted weapons in the psychological Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. ”
Or Henry Makow:
http://www.henrymakow.com/inside_the_cia_with_gloria_ste.html
Or anyone else:
http://rah.posterous.com/black-feminism-the-cia-and-gloria-steinem-fwd
June 23, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Yep.
June 30, 2012 at 8:45 pm
This was very well written and a great reminder of why I find the labels “atheist” and “freethinker” compelling, though I can only claim to be the former completely. Because I know I’m wrong and mistaken about many things, all the time, and that my perception of reality is not reality. As an aside, Pinker does a great TED talk on the history of violence. It’s a bittersweet reminder of how lucky we are to be living in the West in the 20th century. Nice job with this piece, my friend.
One point: I’m not necessarily sure that a human life is inherently of more worth than the life of a puppy. The only reason we think so (and we do) is because we are human, and can better empathize with other humans.
June 30, 2012 at 8:45 pm
-bluharmony.