Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
Joy, of TelicThoughts, posted some gentle thoughts on PZ Myers, they were deleted due to "incompetence." As a public service, the vile mess is below the fold:
"He Should Die of Gonorrhea and Rot in Hell":
Yeah, that's a a movie quote*. And quite funny too, considering the movie and the context. Would you like a cookie, son?I'm posting it here because PZ's latest escapade of bragging that he was receiving "death threats" after soliciting consecrated Catholic host so he could publicly desecrate it has caused quite the Big Stir in cyberspace over the past week. I'm sure you're all aware of the soap opera.
Odd thing is that he was bragging about those supposed "death threats" on July 10th, but didn't bother to offer any examples until July 14, both dated July 13th and both quite easily taken as nothing more than…
"PZ Myers should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell."
Thus despite hundreds of immediate advisors from Day-1 screaming for him to go to the police with these so-serious "death threats," PZ didn't go to the police. Or come up with anything at all for 4 days after screaming persecution. Instead, he was still advertising his full real-life schedule on his blog for any and all to read. Not exactly indicative of serious paranoia or anything…
Yet despite his nonchalance about the seriousness of these 'threats', he turned his 1-800-henchmen loose on the email addresses of the two (2) 'threats' he finally did post. Which led, naturally, to someone losing her job even though she didn't threaten PZ at all. Sure, she left her business email logged-in so it's partly her fault, but now her family will suffer some real-life deprivation in an ever-sinking economy - real people (including real children) suffering for PZ Myers' wannabe tough-guy internet act.
This guy is, quite honestly in my opinion, the literal scum of the earth. He won't lose any sleep over hurting real people, and probably won't suffer what he deserves for polluting supposed "Science" blogs with personal ego-insecurities and a dream of being the New Klan's Grand Dragon. He's got tenure, after all, and draws in the ignorant hoards to Seed's little project.
It's a new low in these so-called "Culture Wars" that disgusts me - positively revolting. Having just these past few days been poisoned by produce from Mexico mixed up in a salad-type bar at a Super-Ingles (and spending two whole days unable to keep even water down), perhaps it's fitting to call this fuzzy ball of ravenous hatred "Sally." He hasn't helped my recovery one bit.
And just in case anybody's wondering if this is actionable "death threat" material the FBI would do anything but roll their eyes over, check these out:
dinesh d'souza… should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell
Ben Stein should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell
My opinion, un-endorsed by any of my fellow TT contributors. I figure that at this point I might as well speak my mind… or at least my gut. "Truth in Advertising" would insist that Seed's ScienceBlogs at least produce a disclaimer about the anti-social, purely personal opinions of its erstwhile "scientists," not to mention a pre-link parental advisory for KKK-like Hate Speech. At the very least, it would tend to insulate them somewhat against litigation engendered by PZ's intemperate outbursts. For which they've been burned before…
Politics
Comments
While the response asking for PZ Myers head is overdone and inappropriate. What PZ Myers said was incredibly rude and disrepectful to a degree that is improper for someone of his public stature.
Would you force a Jewish person eat pork? Would you trick a Hindu person into eating beef? Would you burn a Koran? Would you actively go into someone else's religious space and violate it for shits and giggles? Would you want them doing that to your personal space?
If you wouldn't do any of those things, then why would you go into a Catholic ceremony, wait for the host to be consecrated and then purposefully take it and abuse it to make a public show that you are an atheist.
It's just not classy behaviour, and it is unbecoming of any gentleman, atheist or otherwise.
I'm shocked that atheism has devolved to the level of actively trying to offend those they disagree with just because they think it's funny or they don't understand it.
Posted by: anon | July 18, 2008 6:15 PM
anon: it's a cracker. Get over it.
Joy is a rather deranged kook, and always has been. I think "X should die" is a little different than "X has until the end of the month to resign, or I'll come beat his head in". And yeah, I didn't freak out and go running to the police because I get these kinds of threats rather routinely ... it's just that it turns out that angering Catholics has increased the death threats to one or two per day, and the vague threats of unspecified violence or loss of livelihood have gone up to hundreds per day. Funny how that works; most of them also inform me that I'm afraid to antagonize Muslims because they'd try to hurt me, but Catholics are harmless.
So far, I'm discovering that some Catholics are fanatics who are pretty darn vicious.
Posted by: PZ Myers | July 18, 2008 8:15 PM
"ignorant hoards?" Pretty damn funny. PZ is tweaking the religious right. Desecrating communion hosts? He wouldn't bother. However, I've been meaning to tell this anecdote, but the 1000+ comments on PZs blog are rather overwhelming.
Raised a Catholic, I spent 12 years in the parochial school system. I got an education markedly superior to the local public schools' efforts. But in the third grade, an incident occurred, which illustrates a problem with religious education. The teacher related a mendacious fiction, presented as absolute truth, which went something like this: An evil man approached a little grade school girl to commit a nefarious deed. She coveted a pretty new dress, which her parents couldn't afford. The evil man told her he would buy (or give) her the dress, if she would steal a communion wafer, and bring it to him. She complied. He took the host and tortured it until it bled.
On the way home, wearing her new dress, the little girl was struck by lightning and killed.
Now, it's been a long time since I was in the third grade, (over 60 years) but the story stays with me. I'm willing to bet a lot of other adults took in versions of this lie, and this might explain some of the insane overreactions we've run into recently.
Bob
Posted by: Bob Carroll | July 18, 2008 9:45 PM
Joy, to the world: "Truth in Advertising" would insist that Seed's ScienceBlogs at least produce a disclaimer about the anti-social, purely personal opinions of its erstwhile "scientists," not to mention a pre-link parental advisory for KKK-like Hate Speech.
World, to Joy: Haven't actually listened to any KKK spiels, have you?
Homework assignment: look up dictionary meanings of "hoard", "horde", & "erstwhile". Extra credit: "paranoia" & "literal".
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | July 18, 2008 9:59 PM
If God could strike the little girl dead with lightning, why not just wait for him to do it to PZ?
Posted by: The Ridger | July 18, 2008 10:48 PM
Actually, I thought the piece by Joy was very well written. I notice no one responded to her claim that someone lost her job over this. Of course, it is impossible to verify that.
I've been an agnostic all my life. But I find the baiting of the religious disgusting behavior for adults who have no comprehension of what the term "sacred" means except and unless someone finds and pushes their own little sacred button. Apparently PZ's ego is his sacred button.
Posted by: Oldfart | July 19, 2008 8:36 AM
If someone lost a job over death threats, it is the height of stupidity to assign the responsibility to Myers. The person responsible is the idiot who issued the threats. Any other reading of the situation is simply irrational. In this case, someone has spoken up to state that he was the one who issued the threats, mistakenly using his wife's work account to do so. Unable to take responsibility for his own actions, of course, he blames PZ for sending his internet minions after him (apparently he doesn't grasp irony all that well, either). If true, the story indicates that the person who lost her job has full access to the person responsible. And while I feel sorry for her, she has no one to blame but her husband.
What's being offended, here, is not God (who is presumably "all powerful," and therefore fully capable of taking care of himself), but the pride of Catholics. And last I heard, pride was a sin.
Was it inevitable that Myers would get the reaction he got? Absolutely. It does not pay to underestimate the stupidity, irrationality or pettiness of human beings, and anyone with half a brain should know that fervent theists wear their outrage on their sleeves. Nevertheless, Myers is not responsible for the delicate sensibilities of Catholics, any more than Danish newspaper publishers are responsible for the delicate sensibilities of Muslims.
When all the hyperventilating is over and done with, you still have people threatening other people because of disrespect for a symbol. But symbols aren't automatically deserving of respect, nor should they be.
Posted by: iarnuocon | July 19, 2008 10:46 AM
PZ said:
LJoy is a rather deranged kook, and always has been.
Oldfart said:
Actually, I thought the piece by Joy was very well written.
Yeah, that's PZ's standard rebuttal when he can't defend his position, and his groupies eat it up.
He did the same thing to me when I went to PZ's forum and successfully defended Paul Davies, after PZ cluelessly attacked him for his New York Times OP ED.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/plonk.php
If you scroll down to find my pseudonym, then you can see the same unsupported rationale at work. Notice that his best reasoning comes when he links to my blog as if this is supposed to prove something, but if you actually go there, you'll find nothing but real science, albeit unpopular in the same sense as Paul Davies and John Weeler are and were "unpopular" among these fanatics:
"God forbid that you make aa simple observation, like;
'Hey, I wonder if maybe we're just here to *efficiently* increase entropy?'
... and just watch the reactionary kooks go wild when they find out that this would probably require that evolution be guided by the second law of thermodynamics.
Yeah, PZ knows a crank when he can't beat them...
Posted by: island | July 19, 2008 11:40 AM
Children, please play nice. This isn't a forum for beating up on PZ. Joy is a puerile hack, and I posted this lest her intemperate words disappear from the 'tubes.
Posted by: Josh Rosenau | July 19, 2008 11:52 AM
Sorry Josh, but I've never had the opportunity to take that shot back@PZ like it was just presented to me, so I took it.
Sorry, I'll be good.
Posted by: island | July 19, 2008 12:02 PM
A mature person, capable of understanding that it's not "just a cracker" to Catholics and other Christians despite the insanity of that concept, does not ridicule the inmates and then whine about death threats. If you are going to go down that road, you should at least be aware that the
sometimes criminally insanepractitioners of the faith will take you to task. In the past that has involved the invoking of certain fiery methods. Symbols that are essentially meaningless and harmless can safely be respected and the "cracker" symbol is one of those.Posted by: Oldfart | July 19, 2008 6:45 PM
But that's only on one thread. He's had to close out several threads and start new ones because the old ones had gotten so long, they were eating the Sb bandwidth alive. I think the total number of Crackergate-related comments, including the ones that have shown up on other threads, is well over 10,000 by now.
Posted by: themadlolscientist, FCD | July 19, 2008 6:55 PM
Oh, and at least two blogs have been started specifically in regard to the kerfuffle: "Support PZ" and "Save the Cracker." Sorry, don't have the urls handy at the moment.
Posted by: themadlolscientist, FCD | July 19, 2008 6:59 PM