You’re not helping has melted down. And has got it wrong. And isn’t helping.

Posted by Greg Laden on June 22, 2010
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You’re not helping has proven its analytical illiteracy and disregard for reason and truth in a rather ironic way: By demonstrating biased ‘reasoning’ and ad hominem argument in a blog post about how another blog is not really a science blog.

Some time ago they selected Why Evolution is True as a blog they hate, regardless of what happens there. (This is how You’re Not Helping blog operates: purely ad hominem, or in this case, a bloginem … if you are “PZ Myers” or “WEIT” or “Ophelia Benson” or, remarkably, “Greg Laden” then you’re wrong no matter what you said. They give other reasons, and occasionally “agree” (half heartedly) but their inconsistency of argument with their consistency of target choice shows us that they know these entities are deemed wrong before inspecting the arguments being made. And, when someone point out their tactics, the are labeled as conspiracy theorists, which, again, marks their arguments as invalid because of who … the conspiracy theorist … makes the argument. But I digress.)


Anyway, in a recent blog post, “REAL education about science and evolution and biology…”, they claim that WEIT blog is not really doing any important blogging about science because over the last 6 months, that blog has posted over 200 posts that deal with other topics.

This is the same stupid argument — the same utterly incomprehensibly moronic “Where did I leave my brain cells dumb” argument — that was made about THIS blog a couple of years ago and squashed by a guest post called “How much science does a science blog blog ….?” on GLB written by Stephanie Zvan.

This is not hard. Imagine two blogs. Blog A and Blog B. Blog A puts out a science post every day. Blog B puts out two science posts a year. Which one puts out more science posts? Blog A.

According to the logic You’re Not Helping Blog is using, the number of science posts Blog A is putting out would become LESS than the number
Blog B is putting out if you add two non-science posts a day to Blog A. By adding non-science posts, according to You’re Not Helping, the actual science posts disappear.

Isn’t that interesting? I call this “situational reality.”

The graph used in the You’re Not Helping blog post to demonstrate this indicates the anti WEIT bias that the You’re Not Helping authors clearly have, and renders their post, and in fact their opinion on most matters, irrelevant. On that graph, the non-science posts are called “Ramblings” a generally derogatory term when speaking of someone’s writing.

It is a nice looking graph, though.

They also miss the point that there IS a link between science and atheism (and skepticism etc.). Yes, yes, yes, there are Catholic skeptics and scientists who are not atheists and atheists who believe in stupid shit and so on and so forth. The link need not be a simple one-to-one correlation to be real and meaningful. And, this link renders many of these “ramblings” as a valid part of a “science blog” … not necessary in a science blog but common in many.

This post of theirs also helps us be more certain that, as one of my commenters noted, You’re Not Helping is not actually a blog, but a troll that looks like a blog.

What gets the You’re Not Helping Troll’s attention and makes them yell at you? You fail to follow the rules they’ve set for what a blog does. Are their efforts ever worth it? Or does their ham handed effort to tell the rest of us what to say and not say do more harm than good? Isn’t there a way to have this conversation in a way that is more productive and less obnoxious?

I mentioned “melt down” in the title of this post. I went to look at what kind of stupid shit You’re Not Helping was slinging today, and found this post demonstrating their spectacular ignorance and astonishing bias. I thought I’d add a link to Stephanie’s post in the comments and compliment them on their nice graph. But when I went to the bottom of the comment thread I saw that it was closed. Apparently, the comments have become out of control.

Not that commenting on You’re Not Helping has been particularly satisfying to many readers.

Hey, can that whole blog be submitted to the “FAILBLOG” site?

Oh, and Polly-O, in answer to your question: Because whenever the You’re Not Helping authors seem to visit a blog site, they seem to be doing it from a University of Alabama IP address. So it is a reasonable guess that there is a link between the University of Alabama and the You’re Not Helping web site. Alabama. Figures.

Just a guess, of course. Ask, grasshopper, and you shall be given an answer. And by grasshopper, I mean sock puppet. Just a guess, of course.

The blog post in question is here. Have a look, but they are not interested in your comments.

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Comments

  1. #1 Joshua Zelinsky
    June 22, 2010

    I have some slight sympathy for being concerned about “Why Evolution is True.” That is, I can see direct reasons why an accomodationist would be particularly unhappy with it. The title of the blog is deeply connected to evolution and so naively having many posts on atheism and related topics makes it sound like the atheism is intimately connected to the truth of evolution (I know that a Bayesian might argue that they should be connected in the sense that P(evolution|atheism) > P(evolution), and P(atheism|evolution) > P(atheism) but how strong those inequalities are is not completely clear). I suspect that YNH has some of the same objection here but their general lack of coherence is preventing it from being stated in any useful way so instead they come out with this bad argument about science output.

  2. #2 Greg Laden
    June 22, 2010

    I see your point, but this also speaks to how blogs should stick to (or not) topics, how they should be named, etc. It is a bit curmudgeonly to hold a blog to a perception of its name. I doubt WEIT says on its about page what it WON’T do as a blog.

  3. #3 NewEnglandBob
    June 22, 2010

    YNH is getting too much attention. Everyone should now just ignore it and let it fester and shrivel up and die from lack of attention.

  4. #4 Joshua Zelinsky
    June 22, 2010

    Greg, yes, to use the example that’s most personal to me, my blog is titled “Religions, Sets and Politics.” I don’t think I’d take seriously someone complaining that say my blog has entries about math that isn’t set theory. The same would go if they complained that is has entries even astronomy and robotics occasionally. But for Why Evolution is True there seems like a difference in that the blog title is about an issue where there are a lot of different ideas floating around, and ideas about what other people think floating around, so precision in this sort of context might make more sense.

  5. #5 Tony Sidaway
    June 22, 2010

    I agree with the commenter here who said that blog should be left to shrivel and die. Metablogs are a bad idea in my opinion because their subject matter (blogging) isn’t interesting enough to sustain a general subscriber base. Metablogs that advocate for a particular restrictive conception about how another type of blog should be run can probably only ever hope to attract an audience of cranks and trolls.

    If the operators of that blog think people like Myers, Coyne, and Laden are getting it wrong, they have two pretty productive ways to respond: either run a science blog of their own to demonstrate how to do it right, or highlight, recommend and otherwise advocate for those science blogs that do a good job by their lights.

    In fact their critiques of this blog and others can surely only draw more attention to this one, which particularly for an already successful blog, even if the nature of the attention is negative, can only increase its readership.

  6. #6 Ophelia Benson
    June 22, 2010

    According to the logic You’re Not Helping Blog is using, the number of science posts Blog A is putting out would become LESS than the number
    Blog B is putting out if you add two non-science posts a day to Blog A. By adding non-science posts, according to You’re Not Helping, the actual science posts disappear.

    Well quite. What I said, in the comment that the “blogger” took such exception to (the comment, mind you, not even a post), was that Jerry Coyne does a lot of real science education in blog posts. I never said anything about proportion of posts.

  7. #7 Ophelia Benson
    June 22, 2010

    “In fact their critiques of this blog and others can surely only draw more attention to this one, which particularly for an already successful blog, even if the nature of the attention is negative, can only increase its readership.”

    Right – so we shouldn’t stop saying why it’s so stupid and bad, because all it is doing is providing us with free advertising!

  8. #8 Stephanie Z
    June 22, 2010

    Shh, Ophelia. If they haven’t caught onto that yet, why tell them? :)

  9. #9 Virgil Samms
    June 22, 2010

    Why not ignore them, as I do?

  10. #10 Greg Laden
    June 22, 2010

    I keep planning to ignore them. But, like most train wrecks, it is hard to turn away.

  11. #11 Ophelia Benson
    June 22, 2010

    I promise to resume ignoring it…soon. Very soon. Really very soon.

  12. #12 Mike Haubrich
    June 22, 2010

    YNH is a cesspool of self-affirming snots; their “superiority” to us New Atheists evident in their sniveling, Wormtonguish sideling up to religous moderates as a bloc more to combat atheism than to actually try to get things right or “have a dialogue.” Dialogues are not to be confused with multiple repetitive monologues about how some scientists are also religious. We fucking know that, don’t we?

    Also, I am sick of the babble that religion is comforting, when I saw yet another story about Kurdistan girls getting introduced to Islam via Female Genital Mutilation. How comforted are they by moderates saying that FGM is not “true Islam?”

  14. #14 Nemo
    June 22, 2010

    I only ever hear about YNH on this blog. And, having heard about it, I find it totally uninteresting.

  15. #15 Glendon "Mindslut" Mellow
    June 22, 2010

    I like my evolutionary biology blogs to discuss atheism. WEIT is appealing to a large enough audience, I would think. The science of evolutionary biology is under attack by many stripes of religion in many places. I really don’t get their problem with it.

    I expressed that, got insulted at by another commenter, and called them on it, and they shut down the comments. If that’s the new modus operandi, I wonder how many other threads they’ll have to go back and do that on next?

  16. #16 Oedipus Maximus
    June 22, 2010

    My YNH post was not just about YNH; it was also my attempt to put the situation in a broader psychological/philosophical perspective.

    I’ve tried to do the same in a new post, but this time I focus on the problem without mentioning YNH. I hope never to bring them up again.

  17. #17 Stephanie Z
    June 22, 2010

    Glendon, any bets that if other threads get closed down, it happens right after a cascade of insults from Milton, Polly and Brandon, who are not (no, no, absolutely not) the same person as whoever shuts down the thread before anyone can respond to them?

  18. #18 Vance Hanes
    June 22, 2010

    Are you suggesting there are sock puppets???

  19. #19 Stephanie Z
    June 22, 2010

    As Greg has pointed out before, the commenting patterns there could just as easily be explained by a small group of slavish sycophants. At the very least, YNH is once again demonstrating a reading comprehension impairment. There is no back-and-forth shit slinging going on in that thread, although there is a certain amount of shit volleying happening on one side of the disagreement.

  20. #20 Oedipus Maximus
    June 22, 2010

    If the “we” as used by YNH really is a “we”, think of what that would entail. When one author writes a post, what do the others do? Stay silent? How could you resist discussing the latest post with your buddies on your collective blog?

    I am leaning towards the proposition that YNH is a tightly-knit group. They aren’t puppets, but nonetheless they express themselves in harmony.

    If there are multiple YNH authors, then each has their own commenting persona. If there is a single YNH author then the others are permanent lackeys. It makes little difference either way.

  21. #21 Glendon "Mindslut" Mellow
    June 22, 2010

    Stephanie, no takers on that bet.

    I will grant the YNH-fans this: they’re capable of baiting by misunderstanding and using insults enough that it’s hard not to comment back.

    (Wistfully) Still, nothing will ever top Julie calling my comment “the epitome of mindsluttery”. Not even the “no shit Sherlock” in the latest post.

  22. #22 Greg Laden
    June 22, 2010

    Glendon, I want to see you draw a mindslut. So we know what it … or the concept … looks like.

  23. #23 Glendon Mellow
    June 23, 2010

    Greg you are on.

    But I hafta finish my chores first.

  24. #24 Raven
    June 23, 2010

    Re “mindslut”. Greg, you remember that Dawkins rap video with the Great Machine? Remember how a certain lookalike character was dressed and dancing? There you go.

  25. #25 Patrick
    June 23, 2010

    Why is there an evolution-creation debate? In spite of the fact that the evolution hypothesis is stuck in step 3 of the 7- scientific method and there are 4 gaps in the hypothesis that evolutionary scientists admit cannot yet be explained, Evolutionists have already won. Evolution is taught in public schools, creationism is prohibited. Evolutionists have won in the courts. The media unanimously supports evolution. Why don’t Evolutionists simply ignore the Creationists’ objections? Or, why not point out that Creationism is not within the purview of science because God is not a falsifiable hypothesis nor can he be proved by science?
    Consider the fact that of the 6 major theological positions on creation, 3 allow for evolution, albeit with a divine influence of some sort, such as to fill those 4 gaps that scientist are struggling with. There are 2 reactions when a Creationist proposed theistic evolution as an answer to the incomplete hypothesis testing and the 4 gaps. An evolutionary scientist would respond by admitting there is no scientific explanation for the gaps, as yet, and dismiss the influence of God as something outside the purview of science. The Evolutionist philosopher, however, becomes extremely agitated at the mention of God because Evolutionism is about atheism, not science.
    As a philosophy, Evolutionism is not held to the rigor of hard science – the scientific method can be ignored. As a philosophy, Evolutionism can object to theism whenre hard science cannot comment. Evolutionism is a major cornerstone of Marxism and Human Secularism because is supports those philosophies built on atheism. Twenty-five percent of the Humanist Manifesto is devoted to opposition to religion and theism, and the establishment of evolution and atheism. As long as there is a God, those philosophies fail. But Darwin supplied the “missing link” to their philosophies,; a way to explain how we got here – without a God.
    Science and faith are not mutually exclusive, but theism and atheism are. So when a supporter of evolution attacks creation (and usually the Creationist), he does so as a philosopher, not as a scientist. And, when a Creationist opposed evolution, he must do so as a philosopher/theologian – not as a scientist. An excellent resource regarding the creation-evolution debate can be found at http://sechumanism.blogspot.com/p/secular-humanism.html

  26. #26 Andrew
    June 23, 2010

    4 gaps in the hypothesis that evolutionary scientists admit cannot yet be explained

    name them

  27. #27 DuWayne
    June 23, 2010

    Jeez people, I really don’t see why you are all being so hard on YNH. I mean come on, smug superiority + “you aren’t doin’ it right?” And so many lovely commenters? Why are you nit-picking on them so much?

    They are obviously only trying to help you all become better bloggers, who represent much better.

    Excuse me while I cackle rather gleefully at the aforementioned meltdown. I am the last person to knock someone for being arrogant, or even an asshole. I mean it may have escaped the notice of some folks (at least those who don’t know me), but it could be said that I am kind of an arrogant asshole. But one thing I am not terribly inclined to do, is to dismiss arguments that I cannot manage a response to. At the very least I acknowledge the argument and apologize for not having the ability to deal with it at a given moment.

    I don’t just sit there and pretend that my opponent’s argument is so weak that it doesn’t deserve a response.

    Glendon –

    I think “Mindwhore” has a much better ring to it. I am not so sure about “mindslut,” but I could totally wear “mindwhore” as a badge of honor. Although “mindslut” doesn’t carry the implication that you require payment…

    Personally, btw, the only thing that makes much sense, as a “mindslut,” is someone who is willing to “entertain” many ideas at once. Personally, I love new and sometimes even contradictory ideas and I absolutely love the sensual nature of the language used to express and consider ideas. It makes me sort of shudder a little, to consider the caress of certain words – strings of words expressing certain ideas – across the synapses. The neurons adjusting, shifting slightly to accommodate new information – I positively gasp at the subtle interplay of pain and pleasure. And the really hot and heavy ones that just kind of surprise you in the middle of the night…

    Mindslut, mindwhore – whatever one might call it, it works for me.

    Fucking asshats who use “slut” as a derogative suck big, sweaty donkey balls. Just because your rude ass never got enough, or because you might not have been particularly interested in the first place, doesn’t mean there is something wrong with those like it and get a lot of it.

  28. #28 Oedipus Maximus
    June 23, 2010

    Patrick, the out-of-place voluminousness of your comment compels me to ask, are you posting this to fulfill the fourth course requirement of Dembski’s PHILO 4483 class?

    (4) 3,000-word record of interactions with contrary websites, totaling at least 10 posts and giving URLs for posts — 10 percent positive. Due by last class meeting. This is where you get to mix it up with people on the other side of the debate over faith and science. It will open your eyes.

  29. #29 Greg Laden
    June 23, 2010

    Oedipus: I’m pretty sure that is correct. The same post occurs in a few places on the internet.

  30. #30 Uni
    June 23, 2010

    To the uninitiated YNH looks like a bunch of self satisfied cronies sitting around bitching about their favourite ‘dislikes’ in atheist blogging, if not outright sock puppeting. And the way they use the tone argument while slipping in their tone without usually admitting it makes their accusations at other people’s hypocrisy rather… hypocritical.

    To the uninitiated this post looks like a bunch of whiners sitting around relishing their own interpretation of YNH and slapping each other on the back about how totally wrong they definitely are, and even if they aren’t that wrong they’re definitely sock puppets or at least so close knit that we can ignore their criticisms.

    To the believer YNH looks like a bunch of slightly too snarky atheists trying to clean up their side of the blogosphere so we can rightfully take our place again as the shining example of rational balanced fail-rhetoric free blogging that atheists should be.

    To the believer this post looks like a bunch of people rightfully slapping down the petty complaints of a suspicious group of people who’s opinions are biased stupid and wrong but worse than that hypocrites because being biased stupid and wrong is certainly not fucking helping.

    I don’t know who I am

  31. #31 Stephanie Z
    June 23, 2010

    Uni, I don’t see that there’s any pressure for you to be any one of those choices in particular (or whatever more nuanced person you might want to be). Is it important to you to decide that someone is right and someone is wrong in this particular skirmish?

  32. #32 Greg Laden
    June 23, 2010

    Uni: Well put.

  33. #33 Dan J
    June 23, 2010

    My own single (and probably staying that way) comment on YNH (on the “About” page) passed moderation. I tried my best to keep my language well above its usual level (i.e. I actually used the word “frickin’”). *grin*

    I seem to see a pattern of those atheists who “take the high road” expressing the opinion that it is the only approach that will yield results. Denigrating the “low-brow” attempts of the rest of us foul-mouthed curmudgeons seems to be a favorite pastime of theirs.

    Fuck them. I’m expressing my opinion regarding the ignorance, misguidedness, hypocrisy, uselessness, etc. of god-filled thought of any stripe. If YNH doesn’t like it, or other apologists and accommodationists don’t like it, they can fuck right off.

  34. #34 Mike Haubrich
    June 23, 2010

    Greg – Patrick’s comment is a spam for a book he has written on Secular Humanism, the new communism.

  35. #35 Glendon Mellow
    June 23, 2010

    DuWayne, there was a type of genius in Julie typing the phrase “epitome of mindsluttery”. It rings wonderfully. I really need to add it to my Reviews page. I think it’s the long vowelly “mind” followed by the gutteral “slut”.

  36. #36 Patrick
    June 23, 2010

    The four questions that still need work are: How did life begin spontaneously? How did eukaryotic cells evolve? Howe did animal consciousness evolve? And, how did human intelligence evolve?

    The reverence to my blog site is to complete my thoughts. I assumed this group’s reading material would be too narrower to include my book.

  37. #37 Kirth Gersen
    June 23, 2010

    “How did life begin spontaneously? How did eukaryotic cells evolve?”

    I love these, and others like them, because if someone answers, “It most likely happened something like this…” then you reply “Aha! But you don’t KNOW! You could be WRONG!” And basically claim that, short of taking you in a time machine and showing you these events, any explanation somehow doesn’t count. Meanwhile, you can smugly say “Well, I DO know! Godditit!”

    See, I’ve had this conversation before. Any number of times.

  38. #38 Dan J
    June 23, 2010

    The reverence to my blog site is to complete my thoughts. I assumed this group’s reading material would be too narrower to include my book.

    Gosh, Patrick. If the way you’ve composed your comments here is any indication of the contents of your book… Just… wow.

    If you’re really looking for answers to those four questions, perhaps you might consider seeking a graduate degree in one or more of the relevant fields of study. You could even make the evolution of animal consciousness the subject of your masters thesis!

  39. #39 Patrick
    June 25, 2010

    Kirth, let’s assume that god did not do it (actually I don’t know if he did or not), that leave the question: how did it happen? No one can respond “Aha!” to your answere because you do not put forth an sanswer-yours or other scientists. I am not alone in pointing out that these are questions that still need to be worked out. reputable evolutionary scientist, including richard Dawkins admit thee are gaps yet unfilled.

    Dan, actually I have a masters in biology and a Ph.D. in engineering. I must ask, all why the hostility?

  40. #40 Stephanie Z
    June 25, 2010

    Patrick, do you really expect spam to be greeted with open arms?

  41. #41 Stewart
    June 25, 2010

    It’s hard to be impressed at someone’s boast that they’re writing a book when their command of written language is inadequate even to the comment containing the boast.

  42. #42 Dan J
    June 25, 2010

    Come on, Patrick. “Reverence” and “too narrower”?!?! your book editor had his or her work cut out for them. Oh, wait. You self-published. My bad.

    You were spamming the comments section here with irrelevant bullshit. The link you put in with your name goes to a page that doesn’t even exist. How you managed to get a PhD I’ll never understand. Was it from a Christian diploma mill?

    You’re a fucking troll, Patrick. You self-published your book with the Christians over at Holy Fire Publishing because no self-respecting publisher would even look at it. You can’t waltz in to those places without a good literary agent, Patrick. I’m just sayin’…

    You’re a hack and a troll, and you don’t seem to be very good at being either.

  43. #43 Jason Thibeault
    June 25, 2010

    Hey Dan, all why the hostility?

    *snrk*

  44. #44 Kirth Gersen
    June 25, 2010

    “No one can respond ‘Aha!’ to your answer because you do not put forth an answer – yours or other scientists['].”

    Our defintions of “answer” are different. As a scientist, I look for explanations that fit the observed facts. I’m happy to alter or expand the explanation as needed, if new facts come in, and ultimately I hope to have an explanation that accurately predicts the new facts I have yet to find.

    I do NOT look for “THE ANSWER” which must somehow spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus, as it were, and must be a pinacle of truth for all time. As long as you expect the latter, rather than the former, you’re barking up the wrong tree, and will continue to be greeted with nothing more than derision. Because that’s like for me to ask you for a tissue, and then berate you for not handing me a rose instead.

    And, yes, if you honestly want to discuss abiogenesis, you should do it on an abiogenesis thread, not on the blogosphere.

  45. #45 Kirth Gersen
    June 25, 2010

    Edit: that should read “not on a thread about the blogosphere.” Apologies for the sloppy editing.

  46. #46 Hitch
    June 26, 2010

    I for a while read YNH and thought they are serious. A site that just tries to keep people honest. But in the recent days I just in detail read what they claimed.

    Basically they are micro-scope farming a certain, fairly small set of blogs. If they find anything that can possibly interpreted as negative they will attack it.

    In some cases they will go so far as to mischaracterize what people actually said.

    Here is an example:

    Today they claim that Ophelia Benson omitted information in a blog post.

    http://yourenothelping.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/sins-of-omission/

    She discussed how Chopra and others organize a prayer event to help the golf spill. The charge is essentially that she failed to omit that they were also collecting donation implying that this will help and should absolutely should have mentioned it.

    Aside my opinion that I disagree, she of course never stated that this prayer event does not take donations and in fact her comment section already discussed the donations 2-5 hours (depending on time zone) before YNH even posted on it.

    They basically omitted that she indeed mentioned the donations in the comments to make the case that her blog post supposedly unforgivably omits that there was also donations.

    Then they have the balls to post a second rant:

    http://yourenothelping.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/sins-of-omission-and-begging-the-conspiracy-question/

    Which attacks PZ who commented speculating if the money will even see good use (noone knows, but just that speculation is a sin on YNH).

    Funny enough that comment is just a line above Ophelia’s comment that proves that she does discuss the donation question.

    Yet that second post also makes no mention of it.

    So basically they intentionally omit stuff to charge someone of a lie of omission.

    Whoever is behind that blog is basically outright dishonest and constructs things to accuse people with.

  47. #47 Raven
    June 26, 2010

    Patrick @#25: “Human Secularism”?

    As distinct from… what? Chimpanzee Secularism? Feline Secularism? Octopus Secularism? (flip o’ the tentacle to PZ!)

    Patrick @#36: “The reverence to my blog site is to complete my thoughts.”

    So if we kowtow to your blog, your thoughts will no longer be incomplete? Whahamseebam, Sahib! Done! Now, about that “Human Secularism” question above, is there an answer yet?

  48. #48 Patrick
    June 27, 2010

    It is often observed that, confronted with an argument for which they have no good defense, ideologues will attack the messenger. Make a typo and you are illiterate. Instead of discussion, engage in immature schoolyard name-calling: “Hack”, “troll”, “liar” “dishonest”, “spammer”. Like the tinted glass of an automobile allows the driver to honk with anonymous “courage”, the internet has opened the door to “brave” name-callers who honk rather than debate. Point out specific errors in my position? No, just offer a derogatory label. It seems my challenges have disrupted the comfortable assumptions and “closed shop” arguments resident on this blog site. Sorry.

  49. #49 DuWayne
    June 27, 2010

    No Patrick, you haven’t disrupted anyone’s “assumptions,” your beliefs just aren’t that cogent or original. What you have disrupted, to some minor degree, is a conversation that has only a tangential relation to your mindless blather. You are being accused of spamming, trolling and lying, because you are wandering the internets, pasting the same shit into comments – hacking your book.

  50. #50 Dan J
    June 27, 2010

    Instead of discussion, engage in immature schoolyard name-calling: “Hack”, “troll”, “liar” “dishonest”, “spammer”.

    Sorry, Patrick, but you’re wrong again. I was not “name-calling”, but using terms that I find very descriptive of your behavior. Some might call you a “writer”, while I call you a “hack”. It’s simply a difference in degree.

    Like the tinted glass of an automobile allows the driver to honk with anonymous “courage”, the internet has opened the door to “brave” name-callers who honk rather than debate.

    I certainly do not have “anonymous” courage. I’ll call you a hack, troll, prick, fucktard, etc. in person if you’d like to arrange a meeting at some point.

    As was pointed out, Patrick, this particular blog post is not the place for your so-called debate. You and your argument are irrelevant and annoying.

  51. #51 Oedipus
    June 27, 2010

    I just noticed Hitch has shown up here. Thanks to his amazing patience, YNH became so flustered that it accidentally revealed its hand for all to see.

    So let’s congratulate Hitch for hammering the last nails in the coffin. I’ve updated my blog post about YNH.

  52. #52 Patrick
    June 27, 2010

    When I “intruded” into your blog site, I did so anticipating debate, discussion, and interaction with minds that relish opposing ideas. I have experienced this at other Secular Humanism sites. I did not expect the proto-mature mind set of this group. If, as psychologists claim, one measure of maturity is civility, I understand why considered deliberation cannot be found here. I will leave you to your world of isolation and unchallenged ideas where a Renaissance Man would go insane.

  54. #54 Stephanie Z
    June 27, 2010

    Patrick, care to point to one of those enlightened sites where your spam resulted in invigorating discussion and debate?

    And for your reference, this particular Renaissance woman does just fine on this blog.

  55. #55 Dan J
    June 28, 2010

    Still completely off topic, and although he implied that he would not be back, I feel I must.

    Patrick: You will notice that this is a blog. As most blogs, it allows comments to be made regarding each post. In these comments, readers generally discuss the ideas put forth in the original posted article.

    This is not a forum, nor is it a BBS. You seem to have a great many misconceptions about the Internet, and this site in particular.

  56. #56 Hitch
    June 28, 2010

    Thanks for the praise. Mostly it was patience and not actual intent, but I’ll take the outcome as what it is. A good one.

    YNH was interesting. He had post that led one to believe that he could be legit, but the frequency of biased posts just was too high after a while. The one that I pressed him on for me outright crossed the line to a direct smear and he hid info, so I wasn’t gonna let him off the hook on that one.

    I’m amazed he didn’t try to just ban me earlier. Overconfidence…

    Just when he made his case for the ban, he slipped switching identities. Luck.