Yesterday, I ripped into Gordy Slack and the NY Times for bad articles on creationism. Now Slack has responded, and in the interest of fairness, I urge you to look at that comment and browse down to several others he has also made.
He's still wrong, and I still find his article incredibly bad.
Slack's article is titled "What neo-creationists get right: an evolutionist shares lessons he's learned from the Intelligent Design camp". I chewed him out because nothing in his list is anything that creationists got right — it's a litany of common scientific arguments and complaints — and all he's doing is falsely pandering to their self-esteem. He says he didn't try to claim that the creationists came up with these common questions first; OK, he didn't. He says he wasn't trying to give creationists credit for being right; OK, I think he's on shaky ground with that one, but I'll concede the point to him. Now we're left with a problem: what the heck was his article about, then? It's reduced to a shallow attempt at finding coincidental similarities, with no thought put into them.
For instance, his first point of similarity is that creationists say that we haven't answered the big questions of abiogenesis, and scientists say the same thing. Gosh, we're in agreement! But no, we're actually not. Creationists like to point to places where we don't have all the answers, because they see that as a flaw, as a way to discredit evolution — they like to pretend that they have absolute, perfect knowledge in their holy book, even if all they do is fill the gaps with an unsatisfying and pathetic "god did it." Scientists are comfortable with uncertainty and change, and they see those gaps as research opportunities — places where information is admittedly deficient, but where new work can be done. What Slack treats as a similarity is actually a fundamental philosophical difference.
And this is precisely where Slack is most unsatisfying. He claims to be trying to understand the creationist mindset, yet all he offers is credulous tripe in which he demonstrates that he hasn't thought things through. Here, for example:
It surprises me that PZ is so pissed off by my efforts to understand why so many Americans reject evolution. If you ask them, and I have bothered to ask hundreds or thousands over the past two years, many will tell you that more than anything else, it's the arrogant zealotry of cocksure ideologues that turns them off to evolution. They see people calling their intuitions and worldviews retarded and corrupt, and they march the other way. That's one reason why we evolutionists have done such an abysmal promotions job even though we're armed with the most delightful and seductive and potent theory ever. If we can't sell evolution, we must be doing something wrong. Right? I'm just saying that we might start by resisting the urge to spit bile in the face of potential buyers.
Slack has chewed out most supporters of evolution as doing so without much depth of understanding — they don't know about genetic drift, for instance. Yet here he is discussing a group who believe the earth is less than ten thousand years old, who are abysmally ignorant of all of evolutionary theory, including drift, who believe with the utmost certainty that Darwin is burning in hell and that all scientists will be following him, and he accuses the scientists of arrogance, on the word of the creationists.
Here's a clue: Slack got it backwards. It is simply absurd to claim that they are turned off by "the arrogant zealotry of cocksure ideologues", since that is a more apt description of their own than of scientists. Creationists love arrogance. Their whole schtick is about obedience to the precepts of meddling, pushy busybodies, either the phantasmal kind of their imaginary deity or the sadly real kind of the ranting big-haired zealots who lead their churches. You have to learn fundie-speak to understand what these informants are actually saying.
To them, "arrogant" means "competing authority with an intimidating amount of real-world evidence".
And of course they resent that. They believe in irrelevant nonsense that requires them to constantly descend deeper and deeper into lunatic rationalizations to maintain that willful suspension of disbelief. And we come along with that "delightful and seductive and potent theory" that they have to close their eyes to, and which merely demands that they reject the temporal authority of their leaders, who threaten them with hellfire and the loss of their children's love and morality if they accept the evidence. That really is a serious problem, and I know how difficult many people find it to abandon those beliefs, but to call our side "arrogant" while treating their side as humble is not helping. It is reinforcing falsehoods. It is also not going to resolve the problem, because it is a simple fact of the matter that scientists are a competing authority, and they do have an overwhelming amount of evidence that the creationists are wrong, wrong, wrong. Those are not points that we will surrender.
Slack is also unhappy that he has been vigorously criticized and insulted and shredded up one side and disemboweled down the other, all without regard for his genuine appreciation of good science. That's all true. Comment threads here are not for the temperamentally delicate, that's for sure, and everyone gets the rhetorical knife all the time (and that includes me: if Slack is appalled that he is being insulted, he ought to spend some time in my shoes. At least no one has threatened to shoot him over this argument yet.) Complaining about that is pointless. It's like whining that the crucible is hot; of course it is, that's what they're for.
As for the complaint that we're an angry, hostile bunch here: in a country where the enterprise of science and education are seriously threatened by the activist religiosity of ignorant creationists, where politicians defer to religious lunacy, where the craven media has abandoned the concepts of adversarial and investigative journalism, we're mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore*. I propose that there is something wrong with you if you aren't angry.
*That's a quote. Look it up, it seems rather appropriate here.
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Well, hell. I'll just link to the long comment I just left at the earlier post:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/what_is_wrong_with_journalis…
Well said PZ!
Nice response, PZ. I get where the quote is from as that phrase runs through my head frequently.
Shorter Grody Slacker: "I'm going to piss on scientists and tell them it's raining."
Slack doesn't get it. Why give those ID'er and inch? Because you know they will take a mile instead.
Very good PZ.
Apart from being a bit of a dick, Gordy missed the point altogether.
The point was not that he's wrong, it's that he didn't say anything new or, for that matter, interesting.
I feel pity for Slack, he has the hearth in the right place, but selling science like a product, its not going to work, the creacionist are uprooted strongly.
The fact its like PZ said, they are going to chew in the credit, and spit everything else.
I know we can`t defeat faith with reason, and Slack its triying to come down to their level, to speak in their same lenguaje, but that its not going to work... come on, we are talking about real, material, phisical evidence, nor some imaginary deity, evolution its not a theory for god`s sake!
its just as real as gravity, just as real and tasty as cake...
So, we scientists are going to get our dander up because the Creationists got their dander up because we scientists got our dander up . . . . anyone see a chicken and and egg here?
Look, it's been said many other places, but this isn't a scientific, evidence based, statistically defensible problem - its an EMOTIONAL issue. Creationists react they way they do because they feel their way of life is threatened, their religion is threatened - at the most basic level their right to exist is threatened. Are they reading the Bible too literally - yes they are, and I say that as both an oceanographer and a Protestant Christian. You can't overcome emotion with cold hard facts - you have to deal with it in a way that, frankly doesn't work in most scientific arenas. And "selling science as a product" - what's wrong with that?
Gordy says in reference to this blog, "We're not really learning very much here, are we?"
Gordy, you can't possibly be so daft that you've missed the huge collection of archives here (try the molecular biology category), and you can't possibly be so knowledgeable that you've learned nothing from them. So your question must simply be ignorant, arrogant rhetoric. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess...
Heh. This post is already the first result when you search on that quote.
Astrologers and astronomers both agree there are stars in the sky, but I would hardly call that 'common ground'.
Arrogance (as others have noted, a code word for "having the truth on our side") is not the problem. Fundamentalist creationists aren't in a mindset to hear the evidence for anything other than their narrow worldview, regardless of how softly and sweetly it's couched.
I've been there -- as a fundie teenager, I dropped Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan in contempt, as far as I can recall because it said something about the universe being billions of years old and human beings not being the metaphorical center of it. A year or so later, I was happily reading Dawkins, despite his much-trumpeted "abrasiveness". My willingness to think for myself and accept evolution had nothing to do with scientists and their positions and everything to do with dating someone from a different background and subsequently questioning my religious upbringing.
I think that the most important thing is to plant the seed and get creationists to think for themselves.
You hit the nail right on the head, PZ. By virtue of the fantasy world they have created for themselves, fundamentalists are the most arrogant and self-absorbed people on the planet ("God loves me! He listens to me, and he talks to me! Me, me, me!") Religion promotes unbridled egotism, and tries to dress it up as humility.
And boy, do they hate it when someone points this out to them...
I think that the last sentence of your post is a little more telling than you'd like it to be:
I propose that there is something wrong with you if you aren't angry.
I believe that it's the other way around. Anger is for insecure people. I have no insecurities on this matter: I am absolutely, positively certain that evolutionary theory is the right track to follow, and that creationism is absolutely the wrong track to follow. I know that time is on my side -- I am certain to win in the end. If creationists take over America and banish the teaching of evolution, then America will fade as a civilization and will ultimately be replaced by a civilization that does not engage in self-delusion. Ultimately, the reason why truth always prevails is that denial of the truth always has negative consequences, and competition insures that the weak are eventually superseded by the strong.
If you're angry, I suggest it's because your understanding of history is less certain than your grasp of biology.
That vaguely reminds me of this poem by William Blake.
Perhaps some on this list will understand that Gordon is a purveyor of FALSE SLACK!!!
Typical pinkBoy
-PraBoB
When is the last time you saw an ad for Coca-Cola on the side of a Pepsi bottle? Do you start to see why Slack's article is coming under fire?
Wow, don't you guys know that people aren't buying into the scientific explanations of gravity because those damn scientists are so arrogant when they explain it?
Agreed, leaving them sinking in their pit of dogmatic
arrogancy, its awful.
And "selling science as a product" - what's wrong with that?
I know we scientist have to sell out our stuff in order
to get funding, more in the industry themed issues. But
that friendly aproach with creacionists doesnt look as
your current vendor in a store triying desperately to
sell you a new coat ? They arent buying, but im sure they are
going to use that article in their benefit.
It is painfully obvious what the problem is, and it isn't arrogant zealotry. The problem is the source of their worldviews. They turn away from evolution because they already disagree with it. Slack's article supports the unique view that we should advocate for evolution by not advocating evolution.
I was late to the dog-fight, but I at least came in on his whine at Post 125 which was basically: Wah-Wah-Wah I'm going to take my ball and go home you meanies.
He really needs to get a clue about the whole thing. There really isn't any significant cadre of "arrogant" evolutionists "spoiling" the creotard belief in evolution.
What really exists is a marketing campaign that makes that assertion and Slack foolishly bought into the premise with little, if any, skeptical thinking on his part.
Richard Dawkins? He's a marshmallow. PZ Myers? Sorry, he went to UO with my wife and she's says he's a nerd. A smart, nice and polite nerd, but still a nerd and hardly the spawn of Satan or the Anti-Christ. The "worst" of those I've seen in the media might be Christopher Hitchens and even he's polite when he's tearing people up.
Yet I look on the other side and we've got the detestable Ken Ham, Ken Hovind, Pat Robertson, Patrick Terry, John Hagee, to some extent Billy Graham, that ass clown at Coral Gables, Creflo Dollar, the Gay-Meth guy, and a host of intolerant second-fiddle shit-stain preachers that routinely decry evolution and number in the tens-of-thousands. And they're not even polite about it. They're very clear that "evolutionists" are evil fuck-tards who've destroyed the fabric of western society.
Church of Christ, an association of autonomous, non-denominational churches, for example. While "independent," they're really peas in a pod. Big on literalism. Old and new testament guys. Hate gays (though they put a nice face on it), anti-divorce, anti-abortion, anti-dancing, anti-music, very repressed an strict - 10,000 congragations and 1.3 million members. Of which I suspect only the tinies fraction accept the theory of evolution.
Wow, Chris, and you don't care how many people are hurt in the meantime? You don't care that creationism is part and parcel of a worldview that denies women the right to be fully realized and autonomous human beings, that forces everyone into following one narrow set of rules, that gleefully tromps to war against people of the 'wrong' religion because they deserve it and God told them to do it? I know that we're going to win in the end if you take the long view, but I'm angry that lives are being fucked up because of it right now. I'll throw in another well-known quote: If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.
Slack's article supports the unique view that we should advocate for evolution by not advocating evolution.
Not quite unique; see Nisbet and Mooney for prime examples of this mindset.
We call the intuitions of psychics retarded and corrupt, too.
Anyway, I don't call either their intuitions or their worldviews retarded or corrupt, until they reveal their pig-headed rejection of evidence and of the proper inferences made of them. Unfortunately, their "worldviews" demand that they call us liars for being open-minded and honest, and most of them do so without any concern about others or for proper means for deciding small-t truth.
More to the point, the latest eruption of creationism wasn't in the slightest provoked by us, rather by people who can't stand having their theocratic desires thwarted by the courts. We're reacting against bigotry, they're not. Slack's completely wrong about the reaction, other than that the creos reacted immediately against new knowledge.
Perhaps Slack has never heard of Expelled, which is a Godwin's law-evoking film that primarily makes false accusations against us, and false claims about science, history, sociology, politics, government, and education.
Of course Slack is trying to be politic in finding common ground with the IDiots. The problem is that to do so is a fool's errand, since they'll gladly take any (no matter how false) admission on our part, quotemine it, propagandize bits and pieces of it, while never admitting anything that Slack or anyone else says about their abominable practices.
There are people with whom we should be politic, including (in individual treatment) many rank and file creos. What is completely wrong, and stupid as can be, is to suggest that there is anything honest or just in the movement, or that it has any legitimate complaints against science as a whole. Expelled should have taught even the dullest that, so I have to suspect that Slack isn't just dull, there's something wrong beside that.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Yeah, Scooter, Slack got no Yetis in his family tree.
I used to read "The Paper of Record" with great relish on Sundays... brew a pot of java, do the crossword puzzle, devour about half of it on a Sunday morning. Hell, even read it in a favorite bar, switched from coffee to Guinness at noon- it was a genteel way to spend a Sunday morning outside of biking season. Now, it's crap. I haven't read the damn paper since they hired Kristol.
Basically, the paper's become the NY Post with less entertaining headlines.
If you ask them, and I have bothered to ask hundreds or thousands over the past two years, many will tell you that more than anything else, it's the arrogant zealotry of cocksure ideologues that turns them off to evolution.
--------------------------
Sometimes being in the majority simple means you have more fools for friends.
Enjoy.
Phillip H. (#8):
If beef stew is your product, and customers say they don't like the chocolate chips in your beef stew, you can easily change the recipe.
However, if all experimental results say co2 emitted by cars, coal power plants, burning oil, etc, is changing the ph of the ocean, making life for shelly creatures more difficult, and killing corals, and your 'customers' dislike what you have to say about co2, you can't simply change the recipe and deliver the product they want. You're welcome to re-run the experiments, make new obs, and so forth ... but the results won't necessarily change.
The problem is that while there are many ill-informed people who believe that evolution is true, there is no honest creationist who is well-informed. The former set of people just happen to trust the well-informed and honest people who do believe and understand evolution.
Oh piss off. Life isnt a Disney movie where everyone sits around singing at the end. You dont get change unless you work for it, so, youre welcome. Youre welcome on behalf of all of us working for change while you sit on your butt 'certain' evilution will 'win in the end'.
ugh.
Well, he's got a certain point, though. If you've got someone who's religious but still uncomfortable with his pastor's rants about creationism being true and evolution being the work of the devil, for example, you won't get far by telling him that what he believes in is a load of bull, even though that's actually true.
Put another way, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar - you gotta speak their language, and you gotta make sure that you're not preaching to the choire. (Unless, of course, you really are trying to address the choire, like in this blog: that's a different issue.)
I think I recall you (PZ) saying this yourself recently, too; I can't find the post again right away, but you mentioned that you were attending a conference or so and that people were surprised that you didn't breathe fire and eat creationists for breakfast, and you also said that this is intentional - that you're trying to not turn people away by being overly abrasive or brusque.
It's difficult for me to say whether Slack's really on the right path here, though: his attempts to reach out to those I've mentioned above (such as religious people still tending towards evolution rather than creationism) may well actually be harmful insofar as that they lend further undeserved credibility to the hardcore creationists (well, not that there's really any other kind).
It's too bad that "The Scientist" gets any mention anywhere much less on PZ's place. The Scientist nothing but a registration required spam generating pile of smelly.
Network. What a cheerful movie.
#18 got it right. The "arrogant zealotry" of science doesn't originate in scientists, it originates in airplanes flying through the sky. Electrical power generators. Vaccines. Sattelite communications systems. Transistors, plastics, and superconductors. Celestial mechanics that *dare* to put the sun at the center of the solar system, and then have the temerity, the gall to make acurate calendar predictions. Sheer, unmitigated arrogance! How dare we claim that a more accurate, useful theory is both more accurate and more useful!
Our theories work for a living. They earn their keep. How about yours?
Assuming that is a fact, it seems to me a good reporter would then ask himself, are they telling the truth? Can they really tell the difference between the confidence that comes from long thought and examination of the evidence and cocksure arrogance? Shouldn't they have to examine the evidence themselves a bit before jumping to that conclusion?
It seems to me that the test for cocksuredness vs. justified conviction is a willingness to examine the evidence on both sides.
Here's the problem with that statement: they have to believe that we are arrogant zealots because they have no other excuse to say that we're purveyors of lies. That is to say, thanks to ressentiment, and because of lies gushing from the pulpit, they decided that we were arrogant ideologues before considering anything we have to say.
Slack just believes their highly dishonest excuse to malign science and scientists, because he's lacking balls and brains. That biologists can be arrogant and/or zealots I don't doubt, but does anyone in the world think that biologists are especially bad at that? Other sciences are at least believed to be worse (physics, especially in the past) on those scores, and no one claims not to accept the general theory of relativity because Hawking and Einstein think (thought) that they're very bright scientists.
Biology is one of the less arrogant and zealous branches of science, at least by reputation, and is faulted for being one of the most. Why? Simply because the IDiots have to spit on biology and biologists in order to sell their garbage.
Why isn't Slack faulting the IDiots for misrepresenting biologists? They have nothing to do other than to sell their product, and to pee into the real science. Obviously it works to some extent. Slack's just a big enough ass to complain about the scientists who point out that the IDiots are doing nothing but trying to sell pseudoscience, and pissing into whatever they can of real science.
His real complaint is that we don't offer up our necks to the would-be executioners' axe. Cause you know, if we were sure of ourselves, we'd offer up science to be slashed, hacked, and destroyed by the barbarians.
And anyone who thinks that anger is only for the insecure (and they mean psychologically almost every time), they really don't know the first thing about psychology. One should be angered at lies aimed at harming science (in the sense that science is at stake, yes, we're not fully secure).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
i don't think creationists are suspicious of the theory of evolution (or science) because it is supposedly forced upon them by arrogant scientists. (even though they try hard to put the blame there.) it is because of the message of the theory itself.
but just as with cults that see the world didn't end when they predicted it, there is no 'nice' way to get the message across.
i don't think creationists are suspicious of the theory of evolution (or science) because it is supposedly forced upon them by arrogant scientists. (even though they try hard to put the blame there.) it is because of the message of the theory itself, and the implications it has for their beliefs.
but just as with cults that see the world didn't end when they predicted, there is no 'nice' way to get the message across.
Well what do expect from the press. The same brilliant incisive analysis they brought to the build up to the Iraq war? The clear elegant way they have pointed out to the current administration in clear terms that torture is wrong, that illegal wire tapping is illegal, that firing people for political reasons is illegal. Why do they think so many of us turn now to the internet for information? They have been failing us for years.
No slack for Slack. Onward evo-devo.
"It surprises me that PZ is so pissed off by my efforts to understand why so many Americans reject evolution."
There's nothing complicated about it.
They're a bunch of poorly-educated idiots who can't find mosts countries on a map because they prefer to spend their lives permanently glued to the tube and harnessed to a little biblical fantasy world that makes them feel special.
It's called human nature (the unproductive, lazy, dark side).
No need to write a tome about it.
There's understanding (sympathy) and then there's understanding (your malicious stupidity and mental laziness will drive this country and its system of education into the ground, you fucking ignoramuses).
More of the latter, put-your-foot-down kind is needed.
If you're angry, I suggest it's because your understanding of history is less certain than your grasp of biology. - Chris Crawford
Aside from the points already made in response, exactly the same anti-scientific, anti-rational attitude is being exploited by those denying the reality of anthropogenic climate change from mercenary or political motives - it is no accident that both forms of denialism are particularly prevalent in the USA, and indeed there is considerable overlap between the two denialist flocks. Denial of the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and the need to take urgent action to mitigate it, threatens our lives and our civilisation, possibly even our species. Irrationality, and foolish attempts to appease it, have thus become a threat of frightening proportions. "Oh, it'll all come out right in the end" is, in the face of this threat, crass stupidity.
"Ultimately, the reason why truth always prevails is that denial of the truth always has negative consequences, and competition insures that the weak are eventually superseded by the strong.
If you're angry, I suggest it's because your understanding of history is less certain than your grasp of biology."
Oh, I think we understand history just fine. I'm guessing that you missed this post. The problem with your theory that you will win in the end is that it pretentiously ignores history. Ignorance only needs a small chance to wipe out everything. Knowledge is a fragile thread, ignorance is a raging bull.
A more accurate title would have been: "What neo-creationists at least don't get wrong."
"...it's the arrogant zealotry of cocksure ideologues that turns them off to evolution."
Say - isn't it the creationists who declare that their bible is 100% true and accurate form cover to cover? That whatever the bible says is true no matter what?
Seems to me that the arrogant zealotry is the purview of the fundy, not the evolutionist.
Creationists are very good at projecting their own shortcomings onto others. Too bad Gordy doesn't see that.
But I thought that was the creationist mindset.
It is incredibly tedious and irksome to try to argue calmly and rationally with people who are so stubbornly and willfully ignorant, with people who are so emotionally wound up and desperate to hang on to their comforting illusions that they have to attack you on a personal level.
"The processes of Nature" all the things we have learned about nature science as true is true whether we know it or not and in nor does it depend on us. I do no longer seek out arguments and aggressively push "the truth" but I do not shrink away either.
I can not let bullshit just stay there unchallenged.
How do you engage people in discussion who are primarily some what emotionally disturbed and for various reasons almost completely ignorant of the reality of the facts as objectively demonstrated by observation? How do you engage without getting emotionally wound up yourself.
Thankyou PZ!
(That was a three tissue post)
I'll try to say it as plainly as possible for the slow Gordy Slack. To creationists/IDists, it is arrogant zealotry to question the "Word of God." That is why they decided that scientists were arrogant and zealous ideologues before they ever encountered either the scientists or the science.
Talking with the creationists isn't the point. Understanding them is. For them (most, not all) it is blasphemous/arrogant/atheistic/ideological to say anything that disagrees with their worldview.
When Slack believes that it is the scientists who are "arrogant" and "zealous ideologues", during a confrontation with people who denounce any questioning of their a priori beliefs, we know that he is not speaking from actual knowledge. Apparently his take comes from his inability to distinguish between lies and truth, at least in this matter.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I think that Chris is correct in that 100 years from now, average Joe Blow will view creationism to be as wacky and implausible as we view geocentricity and flat-earthism today.
That is, of course, assuming that in the meantime we don't blow humanity from the face of the earth, or that humanity is not similarly obliterated by some other world-wide calamity such as radical climate change or unthinkable acts of terrorism.
But how can we speed up the process?
Trends indicate that religion, while fading, will never go away.
Non-belief is increasing, so how do we "crash that poll", as it were?
Yes - knowledge does need to be "sold". Are we materialists, or not? It needs to have value, and benefits promoted. Given the practice that Amerca has had at selling and marketing worthless shit through advertising, what can we do to sell Knowledge?
What can be science's "wedge strategy"?
"...arrogant zealotry of cocksure ideologues"???
Scientists are arrogant zealots? Cocksure ideologues? Maybe they need to be more generous and understanding of the facts and opinions of the anti-science crowd?
Dayyum.
I am so glad that someone else watched that movie that you quoted. More people need to see it, esp. with how relevant it is today.
Well said PZ. I don't think I could have stated that better, even with a million years of drafts and revisions. The truth is, their only weapon against us is semantics. Just words such as arrogant, and self assured. So what? What's arrogant is that they're fucking stupid belief in some mystical whimsical invisible asshole in the sky choses to anoint some people as chosen, while destroying other people, loves human beings, but doesn't mind sending them to eternal damnation if they don't beat their children, or believe in even more stupid shit. Honestly, just because a billion people buy into this garbage, with billions of others in equally diverse garbage, does not necessarily make it reality. Sure, they may wish the whole world acted so self-righteously to believe this tripe, but we are here to fight this crap. Anger is fuel, anger is fire, it's what drives us to tear these credulous assholes apart. If you come tell me you believe in closet gnomes, well good luck, show me the evidence. For all their talk, banter, claims of our arrogance, where the fuck is your proof. Show it assholes.
Bravo, PZ!
It's so gratifying to have someone in the fight who has both the chutzpah and a firm grasp of the science. Usually we see one [eg, Hitchens] or the other [eg, most science writers] but not both.
How about that Lenski though? His latest reply wasn't so much rude or insulting to ASchlafly, as reproving, as if to an ignorant child, which, sadly, Schlafly kind of is. The real benefit of Lenski's communication with Schlafly is that the followers of Schlafly, many of whom are earnest and truly seeking answers, may slowly start to grasp who the honest and good actors are.
I think you have to give Gordy Slack a lot of credit for slugging it out in the comments. It really sucks to get gang raped by anybody for any reason.
I have a challenge for PZ: write an article intended to actually convince theists that ID is false and evolution true without insulting anybody. Write an article that could go in a church bulletin. C'mon, PZ, show us how to do it.
Isn't the job of reporting to place events in context and to provide validation? Reporting the testimony of both sides is not helpful when one side can't open its mouth without telling a lie (and who insists on continuing to repeat its lies even after exposure, following the Goebbels theory of media communication), particularly when you are unwilling to provide any caveats indicating that, for example, Mr. Ham, might not be entirely honest and forthright in his assertions of science. Isn't part of the reporter's job to judge the validity of sources, and to explain why some sources might be better (more reliable or accurate) than others?
Maybe that explains why newspapers are dying - if you provide nothing that can't be obtained from other sources, in particular are unwilling to validate or contextualize the events occurring, then you have no point. If I want bias, I can go to Fox. If I want crayon, I can go to USA Today. If you aren't willing to do anything other than quote politicians and crackpots, well, I can get that anywhere. I'm pretty sure AbMab can give me that.
P.S. I sort of thought that the "win at all costs" rhetoric that Mr. Slack is selling is what got us most of the last thirty years of politics. The only thing certain about the "win at all costs" ethic is winning is all you can get. Usually it ends up sort of empty - the king of nothing still has...nothing.
lolife, writing in a church bulletin about evolution is more the job for a guy like Ken Miller. PZ isn't the be all and end all of communication. He does a very good job at what he does, but telling a church to accept evolution means showing them how to reconcile it with their faith. PZ and people such as myself and others here don't care, because we don't give any respect to faith.
It really sucks to get gang raped by anybody for any reason. - lolife
It certainly does. Which is why it's disgustingly tasteless to use this metaphor for being called names on a blog.
lolife (aptly nicknamed, @54):
I'm not usually hypersensitive about this sort of stuff, but this...
...is deeply offensive. Equating intellectual disputes -- no matter how brutally the ideas are worded -- with rape (and especially to do so in such cavalier terms) denigrates both the commenters here and victims of actual rape. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Slack writes:
This guy is completely nuts !
Intuition ?
So the creation myth is just an intuition, the child in his young age just dreams about it, it's all very intuitive isn't it, you know, god created the world in 7 days, the 6000 yold earth, adam and eva, the sin, the flood, noah's ark,...
No, the parents and some religious fuckers are implanting those things in the child's brain at a very young age and they force the child to repeatedly maintain this belief, by fear, every day, every week, that's the reason why teachers have such a difficult time to sell evolution to those children who have been subjected to such malvolent practices.
And now, it's the evolutionists fault because they are arogant ?
PZ, pleaaaaaase don't stop, just keep saying this : "we're mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore".
I wish I could take the day off and keep going. And you're right, there is a lot to be learned here. And I had a blast last night. And though I agree with PZ that the original piece in The Scientist was less than profound, this experience has been profound. For those who are sure I'm so wrong, but haven't read the piece itself, go check it out.
http://www.the-scientist.com/templates/trackable/display/news.jsp?type=…
For those who are still interested in what I think about these things, even if just to rake me over the coals, get my book: The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA. It's just out in paperback. Eugenie Scott says it is "entirely readable and engaging. I enjoyed it
thoroughly."
For those of you who are mostly interested in making fun of my name: carry on. My middle name is William; that should help.
Now I've got to go to work. See you next time. Gordy
Given the practice that Amerca has had at selling and marketing worthless shit through advertising, what can we do to sell Knowledge? - Benjamin Franklin
Trouble is, worthless shit is what the advertising industry is good at selling - there's just very little expertise to draw on if you want to use advertising to "sell knowledge".
Thanks for responding anyway Mr. Slack.
Really lolife, maybe try reading
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/opinion/15kristof.html
Before you start using words like that for some guy getting insulted over the internet. To you apparently gangrape is a joke, but there are countries where somewhere around 3/4 of women are raped, and it's not quite that funny at that point.
And as for Chris Crawford's comment, while it seems that what you say ought to be right, the facts appear to be against you. Certainly it seems impossible that even if the US fails catastrophically, turns completely away from science and goes back to the middle ages, that nobody else will pick up the slack. However, unfortunately it's pretty clear to me that here in the US we've been degrading our science and education for a while now, and nobody seems to be stepping in and picking up the slack. As such your confidence in the ultimate results is unwarranted. Civilizations have certainly turned away from the right path before, check islamic history for one.
Mr Slack, when you come back, please take a look at the next thread about the Conservapedia reaction to evolutionary research. Can you honestly claim that the "arrogant zealotry of cocksure ideologues" that has turned all these people off evolution is to be found on our side?
OK, whose turn is it to link to Altemeyer? Is it mine?
So, despite their aspirations, creationists actually fail to lie every single time they open their mouths. Purely by chance, they manage to utter true statements, and we're supposed to give them credit for this? It's preposterous.
In a debate, you do not concede a point merely because your interlocutor has correctly stated a fact. You assess the context to determine whether said fact was marshalled in good faith to actually make a point in the debate or support a valid line of reasoning. It's not so much that creationists did not actually originate any of the claims we're supposed to be praising them for, it's that they don't employ them in an intellectually honest fashion. Shallitt concludes his rebuttal about the same way: creationists lie. And it's well known that effective lies often contain small kernels of truth. I utterly reject the idea that there's anything admirable or praiseworthy in the fact that some creationist lies are founded on assertions that are not wholly untrue.
Yes, Slack got plenty of things backwards.
[Disclaimer: I'm going to paraphrase articles and comments on statistics which I haven't had time to scrutinize myself. So sue me.]
Slack writes:
There is no evidence that there exist such a group of dogmatists. But there is plenty of evidence that the reverse situation holds; people moves away from dogmatism under the influence of science.
Specifically on religious dogmatism, AFAIU there are statistics that shows that scientists moves from religious dogmatic positions towards more empirical; religious literalists becomes fableists, fableists become agnostics, and agnostics becomes atheists.
Note the correlation here; it is increasing general knowledge that correlates with moving away from dogmatism, it isn't moving away from dogmatism that leads to general knowledge. Of course it isn't quite that simple even if causality can be proven, since one can suspect social effects. But those aren't really apparent compared to the main contributor in a science environment: increased knowledge.
Another point is when Slack writes:
There is again to my knowledge no evidence that this actually happens. But there is evidence to the effect that when scientists attacks ideological positions peoples trust in scientists goes up.
The newspaper Dagens Nyheter writes on Gothenburg university SOM poll on the public view of science [swedish] that the public trust for scientists has increased from 46 percent 2005 to 62 percent last year. The increase is coupled to the climate debate, that now 87 percent of swedes deems important, as the increase in trust correlates to this group.
So when scientists have managed to call fundamentalist positions of the AGW deniers for retarded, people not only sat up and took notice, they were turned on to science.
Now I hear that Slack recently has written a book on the cultural war against science that is ID. Apparently statistics doesn't vindicate his current positions on this battle. It would be far from me to call Slack a cocksure ideologist, but it seems a radically changed 2nd ed would be called for.
Hm. I think Gordy Slack has Ken Ham for brains.
Done. You're wrong.
I do think you've been dogpiled a bit much here, and I do appreciate your willingness to respond in the comments, but I think P.Z. is basically right. You give way too much away.
Whoever wrote the subtitle ("An evolutionist shares lessons he's learned from the Intelligent Design camp") got the tone of the article right---whether you meant to or not, it sounds like you're giving the IDists too much credit, and letting their talking points stand.
For example:
Faith? You really need to be more careful with words like that, when weighing in on the ID controversy.
Sure, abiogenesis is important and we're "in the dark" in some sense.
But more importantly, we have plenty of plausible hypotheses about abiogenesis. (I'm guessing you've read Hazen's book Genesis, Kauffman's At Home in the Universe and similar things, but your article doesn't sound like it.) At the level relevant to the ID controversy, the problem is not that want don't have a good theory; it's that we have too many good theories and currently no way to decide between them.
We have good reason to think that life started with an autocatalytic cycle much simpler than modern "life." We don't know whether it happened in pores in clay, in a lipid vesicle foam, etc., but it's not the kind of scary hole in our knowledge IDers make it out to be. It's a puzzle, not a mystery in their sense, and there's a huge asymmetry in the relevant senses of "faith."
Even if we never solve the puzzle of abiogenesis in the sense of having a satisfyingly "full," detailed picture, it's pretty clear already that this is not a problem for the validity of evolutionary theory in general.
However the initial bootstrapping happened, that's mostly a "don't care theory"---it would be nice to know which story is right, but it's clear that we don't need to invoke an intelligent designer, and it's obvious that evolution did happen in an evidently unguided way from there.
Yes, abiogenesis is an important part of the big evolutionary picture, but not in the way IDists make it out to be, to serve their purposes. This is not a 747-in-a-junkyard deal-breaking kind of scientific problem, so it is not "disingenuous" to say that the origin of life is irrelevant to evolution.
Yes, it's an oversimplification to say that abiogensis is "irrelevant" to evolution. Of course it's not, in terms of piecing together the detailed story. But for this controversy, it's basically right---we might have lost the establishing shots at the beginning of the film, but the overall plot is plenty clear.
What you say is at least as oversimplified, and if I didn't believe you were an "evolutionist," I might even say disingenuous. In the context of the ID controversy, this stuff is not well-described by saying that we're "nowhere close," and just "in the dark" in a way that requires "faith."
You are right that we're mostly not exactly disagreeing with any particular point you make. But your article is shallow, uses all the wrong evocative words, and brings up creationist talking points and leaves them standing; it makes it sound like the IDers have brought up good novel points that should "humble" the scientists, when you know that's not true.
If you're going to weigh in on the ID controversy, that's really not the way to do it. Context matters hugely, and in light of the bones of contention, your article is an impressive display of foot-shooting.
Good post, PZ.
GS wrote: And you're right, there is a lot to be learned here. And I had a blast last night.
______
Most excellent and thanks for the links and info.
Regarding the expression of anger:
Anger, along with all the other emotions, gets us off our arses each and every day. Rational people can express emotions and still be rational. Often, the criticism is if you show emotion, you lose your rationality. Not true. Disgust and anger are potent motivators; their proper expression is not indicative of insecurity, but rather of passion and earnestness.
How can you fight the perception that scientists are arrogant zealots when the only reaction to evidence is also arrogant zealotry. A small part of the problem may be the presentation of information by scientists. It may be cold, diffident and maybe too obscure for a rational disinterested observer, but we are not confronted by many neutral observers. We are confronted by people with far more arrogant zealotry, those with purposeful ignorance as part of the package. Virtually anything that could be presented in any manner to most of these people will be perceived as arrogant zealotry because "Evolution cannot in any way be seen as correct". See the reaction to Miller and other theistic evolutioninsts, it's sometimes more vehement than the reaction to atheistic evolutionists. It is so contrary to a solidified worldview that demands a young earth, an original sin and a flood.
IMHO, there really is simply no way to persuade most committed creationists. The only victories come from the fact of the First Amendment and chipping away the more curious believers who actually make an attempt to weigh the evidence. It's like eroding a rock. Tiny pieces come off the edges and faces. Only with time and continual effort will tiny cracks become larger.
IMHO, there really is simply no way to persuade most committed creationists.
That's it in a nutshell. They argue against science, specifically evolution, because they don't want it to be true, not because they can show it is untrue.
As far as anger goes, it's absolutely healthy. It's how one uses it that can be productive or dysfunctional. To sit around on the side-line and watch people who actually think that deities are real, vie for position and power of a government that controls enormous populations, wealth, technology, and destructive power, is absolutely insane. We all should be angry. Very angry. And we all should participate in the flogging of their decrepit ideas and lunacy.
I am not a recognized scientist, but this seems to be the gist of it:
Science and scientists are supposed to diminish their work to make friends. This seems like a slippery slope to me. They have their work, and they are also human beings who have a need to communicate fact and opinion. So after experiments that may last their whole career, they have to sell it to Joe Sixpack, who hasn't even read a summary, but is told by someone else that it is elitist or evil.
"Hey, Galileo, just soften up that whole "Earth goes 'round the sun thing, m'kay?"
Anger is not the enemy of rationality. Rage is. Fear is. Creationism is irrational - therefore, creationists are irrational. Are they engraged? Are they fearful? If so, why are they enraged? What are they afraid of?
These are not difficult questions to answer.
The abuse, oh sob, Gordy Slack has endured on this site, and one which in his wildest ID dreams he had not expected, reminds me of a scene in the movie, "Hard Times", with Charles Bronson and James Coburn. Bronson is a bare fisted knock down fighter in New Orleans during the 1930's Depression, and Coburn sets up the fights for him. After flooring a tough named Jim Henry, Coburn comes into the fight area, looks down at Jim Henry and says to his opponent fixer, "My, my, what have we got here; he looks like a dead man". Gordy, perhaps you have heard of Pharyngula but were unaware of it's at times devastating repartee against those whose intelligence is not as it appears, especially when offering even a modicum of slanted and disengenuous drivel. Welcome to our "star chamber" where you will be treated with the respect you do not accord to rational thinking. Please come again!
Awright!
Regarding anger and zealotry, I have to take issue with Gordy's comment, "it's the arrogant zealotry of cocksure ideologues that turns them off to evolution."
My former friend-and-roommate-turned-fundie often lamented to me that the Baptist churches in Edmonton were too soft. In his words, he wanted to be told in no uncertain terms that he was a evil, rotten sinner and that he would bur-un in hay-ell if he didn't mend his wicked, wicked way-uhs. As far as he was concerned, there was no such thing as too much fire and brimstone in church. (Likely some of this masochism was due to his guilt over date-raping a girl some years previous. Of course God's forgiveness is important; if he'd asked for the girl's forgiveness, he might have to go to jail, the cowardly bastard.)
Given that these people eat up assholes like Rush Limbaugh, Judge Judy, and Laura Schlessinger as if they were holy communion, I'll need more than the say-so of the Slacks of the world before I'll accept that they're pale orchids who wither when exposed to harsh words.
These people love cocksure zealots more than they love Jesus. Seriously. Lo-o-o-o-ve em! More specifically, they love 'em to spew their cocksure zeal against scientists, liberals, women, and ethnic minorities.
So I hope y'all'll forgive this atheist liberal if he doesn't strain his back protecting the IDiots from their own hypocrisy. If they were really concerned about unpleasant discourse, they'd clean up their own acts first.
Chris Crawford (#14) - You define "anger" as "insecurity". Nothing else? It can't be a legitimate emotional response completely unrelated to one's emotional security? It can't be beneficial in any way? Anger is ALWAYS a bad? Something to be avoided at all times, say, by one's self-control?
Are you out of your mind?
You must have exceptionally boring taste in art, music, and literature. I bet you really get turned on by wallpaper.
"Anger is not the enemy of rationality. Rage is. Fear is. Creationism is irrational - therefore, creationists are irrational. Are they engraged? Are they fearful? If so, why are they enraged? What are they afraid of?
These are not difficult questions to answer.
Posted by: Kseniya | June 24, 2008 3:03 PM"
Sort of goes back to my point above. Creationism and its adherents are not here to debate rationally about facts or observations or scientific methods. They are distinctly afraid of the frenetic pace of change around them - they want certainty in an extremely and increasingly uncertain world. If humans can evolve from bacteria (albeit over millenia), then they ask themselves what is to keep them and their belief system from being wiped out? Christian Scripture - for all its inconcistencies and harsh punishments - gives them that certainty they seek. Calling them "irrational" or any of the host of derogitory names in the comments above only fans their fear that you are out to destroy/get/eliminate them and anything they hold dear. No amount of reason, no amount of peer review, no amount of religion free public education will undo that. The sooner we in the scientific community can grasp this, the sooner we can make real headway.
To the people saying that this is an emotional issue, or that scientists shouldnt be angry and yelling about ID:
That is exactly what IDers want-- quiet, polite, non-intrusive scientists speaking so softly about the facts that they can be easily ignored. It's when guys like PZ and Sam Harris and the whole cast stop being polite, and start yelling "You're dead wrong!" that IDers cant simply look away and ignore the mild mannered scientists with their facts.
If the scientists stop being confrontational about these issues, the IDers will win through easy ignorance.
I for one, think we have looked the other way and suffered in silence long enough. Abuse by the religious will never stop, nor even slow up if no one gets mad or has the courage to stand up and smack them once in awhile. I'm very proud of everyone of you that gives them back the hell they pass out as if it's their due.
I don't know why you'd recommend that we read your dreck, Gordy. The fact is that it's full of misrepresentations and ID "logic". Here, I'll elucidate:
And what evidence do you have that evolutionists aren't "humble"? I should think anyone looking at all that remains unexplained would keep us from being too arrogant. Just because the IDiots constantly say that we have faith in evolution (like you do, Gordy, quite incredibly and contrary to the spirit of science) doesn't mean that we do.
Which has nothing to do with, say, the evidence for the evolution of the flagellum. That you confuse questions about what is well-evidence with those that still are mostly questions doesn't help the situation.
And we don't say that it's irrelevant here. PZ himself has at times argued for not making a distinction, while many of the rest of us have argued that we can and should make a fuzzy distinction between evolution and abiogenesis. Yes, too many claim that it's truly irrelevant, but it's also true that the evidence for evolution stands on its own, and would no matter if it turned out that God produced the first life (like Darwin originally suggested might have happened).
And it's no more relevant, either. General relativity does not depend upon the Big Bang theory.
Most of the people who have argued the matter here see that as an appropriate goal. It is, however, disingenuous to say that evolution "should" explain all the way back to the first replicating organism. We only "should" explain what has evidence for it, and if evidence remains lacking we don't explain. You need to learn something about epistemology, Gordy.
And what relevance does that have to, say, bird evolution? We're not arguing with the IDiots about teaching that we know about life since the first replicating organism, we're arguing about teaching matters that are extremely well-documented, including the divergence of life prior to the Cambrian explosion.
I only have faith that science is what will give us any possible answers to "material questions". I don't have faith in your scientism, and I am quite willing to admit that science may fail in the regions where questions persist. I won't be turning to magic if it does fail, though, because magic has a hideous track record.
Yeah, so? That's why we don't turn to Darwin for the answers to evolution today. Quit writing as if the IDiots are right to claim that we "have faith in Darwin."
Same with the dynamics of the sun. This doesn't mean that there is any sensible questions about applying physics to solar magnetodynamics.
I'd agree with you only a little. As Dawkins and others have pointed out, it is difficult in many cases to raise the proper questions outside of the scientific literature, because the moment you do the IDiots quotemine it (and they also quotemine the literature, yet I don't think the questions are generally hidden for that reason in the science journals).
And we don't claim that science has explained everything. We claim that very much evidence points to evolution, none to design (outside of our rather slight attempts). The trouble here is that you're taking up the "standards" that the IDiots try to foist upon us, to explain everything prior to accepting the science. No science operates like that.
We use the evidence we have to understand weather as a physical phenomenon, while we don't come close to explaining everything at the present time. Yet neither you nor the IDiots take the lack of complete and total explanation in meteorology to be an important failing in that science, nor do you suggest that we have "faith" to accept that physics rules meteorology. It's the only sensible inference from the evidence.
I don't have that faith. There may be extant questions no matter how long we study, for much evidence is missing with no expectation for filling it in. The trouble is that you're acting as if we have to explain everything for it to count as science. No, if we have questions about the origin of the earth forever that is just a matter of missing evidence, and no fault of the science.
In the absence of any evidence for the design of life, save what we have done, that isn't even a living option. And importantly, we're not resting our understanding of evolution on "explaining everything", rather it rest upon the very real evidence that all life is related with the differences being due to various evolutionary processes, including natural selection.
See, your view of evolutionary science is much like that of the IDiots, as if it were an issue of "ultimate origins". You're arguing your materialism, while most of us are arguing about the evidence of how life appeared. I don't care about the issue of the origin of the "designer", I care about the evidence of how life appeared. The fact that no evident design was involved is the real issue.
Who the hell cares? This isn't the issue for evolution at all. Maybe their Creator does exist. There simply is no evidence that it has anything to do with life's origins. Are you really so addled as to think that evolution is about getting rid of God? It isn't.
When I'm arguing evolution I am not denying God's existence. You sound like an IDist, with your false dichotomy.
And the people who are so mistaken as to think that because they "feel God's presence" on a daily basis are not lying according to many definition of "to lie", but they are far from having any "observable facts" behind such a claim. They're simply wrong, and apparently unable to understand what counts as evidence.
Denying it cuts to the very heart of the mistaken (and, on the part of the leaders of ID, dishonest) epistemology that we are fighting. Simply believing something does not provide evidence, and it is insulting to us for you to assert that we should consider such nonsense to be legitimate in arguing about evolution. Sure, I'll listen to an individual who is so mistaken, but it's absurd for me to credit the movement with anything other than dishonesty when they claim that we should take their prejudices as evidence.
It's you who are trying to convince them that God doesn't exist. Ken Miller and the NCSE are not trying to do so. True, many evolutionists do argue about God, but rarely do they say "evolution(by itself)=no God", and when they do they're idiots.
Unfortunately, Gordy, you're about as ridiculous in conflating the battle over evolution with the battle over God as the lying Discovery Institute is.
So? I've actually noted that much of the goal we have in this battle is precisely to make ID look as stupid as it is, so that those who don't understand the issues will indeed default to evolution if they have no religious reason to deny it.
I'll bet that at least as many at the Atheist convention accept quantum theory without understanding the particulars of it as who accept evolution without understanding the details. You don't have to understand science before accepting it, indeed one should accept it "in principle" before understanding the details.
That's almost certainly untrue in the case of many. I would bet that a great many accept it because it is science. People ought to accept scientific judgment when they have nothing else to go on. I accept the judgment of chemists in many matters that I don't understand, and I make no apologies for this.
Really? They have to understand "inflation" before they accept the judgment of physicists on it?
You don't have to be an ideologue to accept the judgment of a mechanic. Gee, I guess next time an expert tells me something about my car that I don't know, I'll have to decline to accept his judgment.
I don't doubt that many are zealots. But the fact that they accept science when they don't understand it is no evidence for said claim. God, Gordy, you're pretty stupid about most of these things.
The fact that they accept the process of following evidence, and then submitting results to peer review and attempts to replicate those results, does have something to do with science's explanatory powers. Judges rely upon science that they don't well understand very frequently, and they are not wrong to do so.
Geez, Gordy, if I didn't know better I'd think that an IDist had written your wretched article. You repeat almost everything they falsely assert, including your unscientific faith in science where it hasn't yet proven its ability to explain.
Just don't go projecting your many faults upon the rest of us.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Thank you to Nick and Bill and Coriolis for smacking down lolife. As I was reading down I had a rant all ready to go but you beat me to it.
If Slack had said that he asked dozens of people over the past couple of years I might have believed him. I frankly do not believe that he has interrogated hundreds and as far as thousands go, that's obviously grossly inflated puffery. If we settle on 200 (just barely enough to qualify for the plural in hundreds) then Slack claims that every third day or so (on the average) during the past two years he has discussed evolution with someone at sufficient length to discover that a large majority of them are put off by the "arrogance" of scientists. Possible? Just barely. But I think it would be rash to take him at his word.
Obviously, the only thing that can be done is to keep hammering the fact that believing in a 6000 yold earth and in the creation myth is ridicule, pathetic, and that those who are endoctrinating children with this stuff are responsible for child abuse.
We've got all the evidence in our favour, and a majority of Americans don't believe in that stuff anymore, but we seem to have difficulties to get this message to resonate accross all media platforms, including amongst people who completely accept the reality of evolutionary biology.
Why are these people making excuses ? Is it because they are afraid the message (and the messengers) goes beyond an attack of young earth creationism, or creationism in general, and is actually an attack of religion ?
A correction and an explanation of a couple things in my last post:
Above, of course, "how life appeared" means "how it appeared evolutionarily from other life." Not abiogenesis.
I said that wrong. What I wanted to say was that nearly everything to which I responded in Gordy's article was something that the IDists say, coupled with their misunderstandings and misrepresentations. Gordy does leave out some of their worst nonsense, of course.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Several commentators have responded to my point about anger being inappropriate in this situation. Roughly, their counterpoints are:
1. Suggestions of Panglossianism: that my rejection of anger presents a naively optimistic view of history, and fails to recognize that competition among societies is sometimes inadequate to insure the progress of truth. I agree that history can take some deep and long downturns -- look at the Dark Ages! But I doubt that rejection of evolution is just as bad as barbarian hordes bearing down on Rome. Yes, the triumph of intellectual nihilism would be a major setback -- but I doubt that it would spread beyond this country and I don't think that this country sets the direction of human progress all by itself.
2. "While you may be correct in the long term, in the short term there's still much to be lost." This is a good point. But it assumes that it is possible to achieve success in the short term -- an assumption that I think lacks foundation. I don't think that we will make anti-rationalism disappear in a puff of smoke. It's going to be a long, slow, slog.
3. Conflation with passivity: "If you're not angry, then you aren't doing anything about it" or "Anger is valuable as a motivating force." This betrays a limited appreciation of human volition. I am not angry, but neither am I passive. I am quite capable of directly countering the manifestations of anti-rationalism where-ever I encounter them. To put it a bit sharply, "just because YOU can't get anything done without being angry doesn't mean that *I* have the same limitation." I realize that some readers are so caught up in the tentacles of anger that they cannot conceive that any alternative exists. I can only advise here that this narrow outlook is one of the detrimental consequences of anger.
Now I'd like to extend my argument a bit by claiming that anger is counterproductive. This is a commonplace idea but it seems to bear repeating in this venue. But let me explain the mechanism by which anger becomes counterproductive. Anger always ends up being directed at people. Despite the admonition "Hate the sin, not the sinner" as soon as you get into anger and hate, you have pretty well lost the ability to differentiate between the sin and the sinner. I offer as evidence the behavior here on Pharyngula. Look at how many nasty comments are directed at Mr. Slack. He's not even opposing evolution, and he's getting called names. Anger in a group setting almost always descends into tribalism: "Rah rah for us, boo hiss on them!" PZ himself dedicates a great deal of space to denigrating the advocates of anti-rationalism rather than anti-rationalism itself. By my comments here, I now run the risk of being tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail because I am not chanting the same fight song as the rest of the tribe (although such behavior will be confined to the more excitable members of the group; I'm confident that the more mature readers will respect the propriety if not the correctness of my remarks.)
In short, anger directs your energies at the wrong target. Anti-rationalists are not our enemy; anti-rationalism is -- and it's not a person. I have on two occasions successfully helped young creationists see the error of their thinking. However, the way I did so could not possibly have been executed had I permitted myself any anger. Here are the factors that made me successful:
a. I respected their spiritual beliefs. Sorry guys, no force at your command can reverse religious belief. Work with it or fail -- it's that simple. I did not attempt to proselytize my atheism, nor did I at any point belittle their religion. Indeed, let me point out that a genuine Christian is an impressive human being -- but there are damn few of them. And by the way, it's a good idea to know your Bible well enough to quote it to them at appropriate moments. I am especially fond of "render unto Caesar" because it explicitly admonishes the Christian to refrain from allowing his spiritual beliefs to intrude into secular questions.
b. I did not hurry. Nobody changes important ideas overnight. It takes time. I didn't hit them with a sledge hammer, I pecked away with a chisel, a bit at a time. Anger has no patience.
c. I genuinely liked them as people, and that was immensely important to my success. If you can't like somebody you disagree with, how can you ever hope to convince them of anything? Your anger would make this impossible.
d. I listened when they expressed their beliefs. I didn't interrupt, I didn't ignore their claims, I didn't denigrate their positions. I didn't argue, I explained. Anger can never explain -- it can only argue.
And my methods worked. I'll warn you, it took months in both cases -- but it worked. I was dealing with students, not adults, and the sad truth is that it is almost impossible to change an adult's mind. But being angry, no matter what, NEVER accomplishes anything.
I've read Slack's book on Dover, and it's actually pretty decent (though not as good as Monkey Girl), so I was surprised by his article. I'm sure that his heart is in the right place, and that it was a case of bad communication. However, I hope he will take the criticism to heart, and be more careful in the future.
They see people calling their intuitions and worldviews retarded and corrupt, and they march the other way.
Lordy, Slack is slack jawed: they don't walk away because people call their intuitions retarded -- they walk away because all they have is intuitions, and are afraid to defend them. They want to be left alone with their "intuitions", i.e., allowed to pull things out of their asses.
If we can't sell evolution, we must be doing something wrong. Right?
Wrong, jack-ass. It's not about "sales" -- propaganda is what they do, counter-propaganda is not the point, and is self-destructive. The point is the process - the medium is the message: that intuition is insufficient to make an argument, that your gut-feelings and a dime will give you 10 cents, that aesthetic appeal is one small element in constructing a rational and reasonable world view.
What the hell? Does he think we're selling soft-drinks or Marxism here? With friends like this...
Kristjan Wager @ 88 Have not yet read Slack's book, but did read "Monkey Girl" and "40 Days and 40 Nights". Monkey Girl is the better book by far. I'm sure you read "Trials of the Monkey" by Matthew Chapman, who also wrote 40 Days and 40 Nights.
You also don't know how to make a proper analogy, Gordy.
Denying that they have a sense of "touching God" would be like denying your love for your children. Denying that God is an empirical fact due to their "sense of God" is only like denying that a person has evil spirits talking to him, just because he happens to hear voices.
We, most of us anyhow, don't deny that religious experiences occur and that they are interpreted as being due to God. I also don't deny that people have dreams. I do say that they're wrong if they think their dreams are due to a spirit realm that people enter into during their sleep. I only do right to deny the supernatural nature of their dreams, and of their "feelings of God".
Not that this has much of anything to do with the evidence for evolution, I repeat.
And generally psychiatrists don't deny the experiences of hallucinations and delusion in schizophrenics. The mental phenomenon is undeniable. That their chemical imbalances constitute any claim for demons or gods, or that they support ancient creation myths, they do deny (not necessarily to the person, however).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Holbach, I haven't read Trials of the Monkey, but I have read the other two books. I'd say that Slack's book ranks approximately on the same level as 40 Days and 40 Nights. It's quite interesting to see where the different authors put their emphasis.
There should be a new book out around now, written by one of the journalists who covered the school board meetings in the first place. I think I need to get hold of that.
At some stage, I guess I should make a group review of all the books about the trial.
@ Chris Crawford, #87:
I'm not yet convinced that anger can't be a positive force for change, but I was pleased to read your account of the two creationists and how you went about helping them to change their minds.
So far, I don't think I've ever read a criticism of the 'Angry New Atheists" that went beyond criticism to gave an example of an alternative, let alone evidence that the alternative has actually worked.
Thanks. Been waiting a long while to read something like that. And kudos to you for patiently helping those students.
CC: 1. Suggestions of Panglossianism: that my rejection of anger presents a naively optimistic view of history, and fails to recognize that competition among societies is sometimes inadequate to insure the progress of truth. I agree that history can take some deep and long downturns -- look at the Dark Ages! But I doubt that rejection of evolution is just as bad as barbarian hordes bearing down on Rome. Yes, the triumph of intellectual nihilism would be a major setback -- but I doubt that it would spread beyond this country and I don't think that this country sets the direction of human progress all by itself.
Hmm, I'm not sure you have a realistic grasp of the international system. We would be the barbarian hordes, now with nukes, in the midst of an ecological catastrophe. We don't set the direction of human progress, but we are well equipped to end human progress --- possibly permanently. It's all interconnected --- global warming denialism, IDiocy, theocracy, abstinence-only education. We are facing a religious mafia that is manipulating our society from the highest to the lowest, and has shown a capacity to put monsters into power, in their interest.
If these folks get their way, the Dark Ages will be but a blip on the screen.
@ Chris #87
My rebuttal to your arguments:
1. America, still, has a heavy influence on the world, and a fundamentalist Christian in the White House would at best set scientific progress in the country back about 10 years, and at worst start World War 3.
2. Success in the short term doesn't require us to win over their minds, just to establish and enforce a freedom from religion, ensuring that science is taught properly, and that religious ideas dont recieve special treatment-- very realistic short term goals.
3. No, you dont have to be angry about ID in order to do something about it, but I disagree that it is counter productive. Slack is getting criticized because he's made a weak concilliatory effort to made IDers feel less stupid for holding falsified beliefs, while misrepresenting science: something every scientist has a right to be angry about.
The view is that somehow you imagine that everyone in the opposition (the IDers) might be able to change their opinion. The sad truth is that a large portion of these people are beyond redemption, and (as they have stated themselves) will never under any circumstances accept evolution/science/etc. The chisel isn't going to work on these people, so we use the sledgehammer to ridicule them and their idiotic and unsupported ideas into the ground, to destroy (justifiably) their reputations and credibility. This may sound angry, but it works: see Ted Haggard, Kent Honvid, Peter Popoff, etc... (we're working on Ken Ham)
PZ and every other scientist and rationalist that has debated the IDers HAS listened to every one of their arguments, and we still do, over and over. We dont interrupt, and an explanation that goes against what the other side claims IS an argument, regardless of the semantics you want to assign.
Why should I respect religious beliefs any more than I should respect a mad man's delusions, a belief (from an adult) in Santa Claus, or that the world is flat. If someone thinks that the world is flat, that point of view is open to ridicule. I dont need to respect it, or compromise and meet them half way (like saying the earth is a semi-circle, or a half-sphere or something like that). Respect is EARNED, and creationists and other religious people have done nothing for which we should respect their foolish beliefs. If they want respect, get some credible evidence, otherwise, drop the belief (or accept it and admit you have no good reason to accept it, and that we can no longer trust your judgement [ie/ faith]).
Also, hurrying might be important - we are at a time when a majority of America thinks the rapture is coming (and looking foreward to it) and that these people have opportunites to take political power, and nuclear weapons. At the very least, these people can gain a foothold in the schools, which condemns future generations to ignorance and suffering.
I'm not saying that the chisel strategy is wrong either, but that religion is a big enough problem, with a wide enough variety of proponents that both the polite chisel and the angry sledgehammer are needed. Some people can be reached through diologue, others need to have their poorly founded ideas smashed into pieces.
#8
Well maybe you can go and tell them why your reading is so much better than theirs and while your at it straighten the rest ofthe 1000o factions out as to their error as well.
I have to give Slack credit for making the best of the situation. His posts should be a lesson for writers everywhere: Even if you can't prevail, you can still shamelessly plug. :)
lolife wrote: It really sucks to get gang raped by anybody for any reason.
___________
*Brutal, disgusting sarcasm on*
But he was asking for it, and what is more he enjoyed it.
*Brutal, disgusting sarcasm off*
Yes, Carlie, several posters quickly and effectively responded to lolife's comment.
Chris Crawford, how do you not know your approach is used by many of us on a one-to-one basis? It certainly is mine, though I can't say I accomplish much else then the believers accepting that atheists can be happy and moral, just like them.
This aspect has been brought up quite frequently, that the display of angry retorts at this blog does not indicate how we act in the 'real' world.
You act from emotion also, else you would be rooted in bed. Studies have shown that when certain emotional centers are damaged, we just rot in place, with no motivation whatsoever. Instead of isolating anger from all the other emotions, to me, it is just an emotion and I respect its potency and utility like I do all the other ones.
Jason: Success in the short term doesn't require us to win over their minds
To just take it further, success won't be in "converting" id'ers --- it's in forcing the mushy middle away from them. There's a vast population that doesn't really believe in ID; they believe in some mushy combination that allows the IDers to flourish as accepted members of the dialogue. The goal is to identify the radicals and isolate them from all the moderates who, if confronted with these crazed theocrats, would retreat in horror.
Just take the example of Bush et. al. When the liberals refused to simply ridicule and demonize them, they managed to wriggle their way into power. J. Stewart and Colbert have done more to undercut that gang than every mushy "reasonable" moderate put together.
Kristjan Wager @ 92 The new book, just out in May and not yet in libraries, is "THE DEVIL IN DOVER: A JOURNALIST'S STORY OF DOGMA V DARWIN IN SMALL TOWN AMERICA" by Lauri Lebo Will read it as soon as it is available. Perhaps another viewpoint of the same trial?
"TRIALS OF THE MONKEY: AN ACCIDENTAL MEMOIR" by Matthew Chapman. He is the great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, and is recommended. Another excellent book is "SUMMER FOR THE GODS: THE SCOPES TRIAL AND AMERICA'S CONTINUING DEBATE OVER SCIENCE AND RELIGION" by Edward J. Larson This book is well woth the read! And one more: "SIX DAYS OR FOREVER?: TENNESSEE V JOHN SCOPES" by Ray Ginger Not as good as the previous books, but an earlier report of this still continuing cancer.
We need an image of scientists more like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Faraday
Your comments are rather interesting to me crawford, since they are probably what I would've said a few years back when I was 19-20 years old. At this point however, I have to say that there is a place both for calm proceedings and angry arguments - depending on who you're dealing with. And basically so long as you're arguing theological points (with no direct practical effects) like whether god exists or not calm proceedings are fine. However, if you're dealing with people who really do think let's say that women are inferior, or that christians are somehow better (more moral, more humble, more whatever) then anyone else, I don't know what reasonable argument you can have. Those are not matters which are a matter of reason, either you accept that people are fundamentally kind of equal, or you don't.
And as to the argument towards history I don't believe it's naive (since fundamentally I agree that it should be true) - it's just that looking at the way the world is going right now there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe it's correct. I'm from Bulgaria, I live in the US and I have old friends who live in England and France and some of the best friends I've made in the US are koreans, taiwanese and japanese - and I haven't heard of any of those places becoming some great place for science and rationalism to make up for the rapid descent of the US in the past 20-30 years. Europe is having all sorts of dumb crap happening all over with immigrants/muslims and fascism/nationalism being on the rise. Japan has been in a massive recession since forever. Korea has it's share of nutjob christians (and btw if you think anger is not an extremely effective force for social change, look at the recent extreme progress of Korea and then figure out just how angry koreans are about nearly everything ;)).
If anything the rest of the world is getting some of the same idiocy as here, except with a different twist (i.e. more like magic/psychic then the usual religious stuff).
I think it's going to take some effort to turn this around.
One last point I wanted to make:
Sometimes when we (angrily, but effectively) destroy someone elses position, you're right, we fail to win them over, and may entrench them further into their beliefs. But they aren't necesarily our targets. When other people who aren't as informed on the debate see one side utterly crush another using scientific evidence, reasoning, and logic, they are usually smart enough to figure out who's closer to the truth.
The best example I can think of in recent history was when those morons from Loose Change debated the Popular Mechanics guys on the radio-- it was the first I had heard of the 9/11 conspiracy theory [yeah I was a little out of the loop at that time], but by the end of the show I had a pretty good idea of who was right and who was full of shit. Now the Popular Mechanics guys still havent, and probably never will convince those Loose Change fools that 9/11 wasn't orchastrated by Bush, but they sent me (an others, no doubt) in the right direction by smashing a bad idea into pieces.
Chris Crawford,
Well, this is quite contrary to findings by Tiedens and Van Kleef who have shown that for instance in matters of negotiations, participants tended to be more flexible toward an angry opponent compared with a happy opponent.
M Sinaceur, LZ Tiedens, Get mad and get more than even: When and why anger expression is effective in negotiations, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2006
Van Kleef, De Dreu and Manstead, The Interpersonal Effects of Anger and Happiness in Negotiations, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2004, Vol. 86, No. 1, 57-76
To weigh in on the anger issue, I think part of the problem is a conflation between whether anger against religion has substance and whether in any given circumstance it accomplishes a desirable end better than other possible alternatives. To me, the former is undoubtedly true, while the latter is a much more sensitive question. I don't know about the rest of you, but I often find it easy to churn with anxiety and frustration to the point where I lose touch with what I actually like about science. The wonder is still buried somewhere, and can be reactivated under some circumstances, but I tend to get disproportionately frustrated about the gnats and apathetic about the progress.
Part of the trouble is that ID won't just go away if we ignore it, but I would probably have more genuine enthusiasm for science if I weren't in the habit of seething over how dumb ID is and how it wants to take away what I've just learned every time I read about any scientific development. I think making us look over our shoulders all the time and causing jadedness is as much a part of the DI strategy as anything.
Kristjan: Just to whet your appetite for "TRIALS OF THE MONKEY" here are some excerpts from the book that I wrote down because they are noteworthy:
"How much longer can our fearfulness and bigotry protect us from seeing how comprehensively preposterous all religious beliefs are?"--- "Each belief is clearly as absurd as the other".---- "Then there is the argument that there must be "some" kind of spiritual being because all cultures, independent of each other, have "some" form of god. Every culture also has "some" kind of tool for eating. What does that prove? Only that everyone shares the same desire for clean rice."----- "I remember hearing C. Everett Koop, a pediatrician and ex-Surgeon General, say, "There are no atheists at the bedside of a dying child", which, unintentionally, is both the best argument "for" a god, and the best against". Good stuff, eh? Read this book!
Chris Crawford,
But it's true, people NEVER achieve anything with revolutions, like in 1789, or by marching in the streets, and demonstrating their anger, and disatisfaction but they do achieve a lot by showing kindness, politeness, discipline, and good will ...
Chris Crawford@87.
That's a thoughtful comment, but I think you're wrong. As frog@94 said, you are completely misunderstanding where the world's at. For most of the past few decades, for all the many admirable qualities of its people and culture, the USA has, in global terms, been a force for evil: for injustice, environmental destruction, and the spread of religious extremism. That tendency has been greatly strengthened by the rise and rise of the US right - and I'd ask you to compare the actual actions of, say, Nixon and Clinton, at home and abroad, to see how far that shift has gone. That rise has not been achieved by the right being polite and respectful - they are still, by far, and despite being in power, angrier than what (rather pitifully) passes as the left. I'm not suggesting the US left (I'm British, for the record) should adopt the hatred and lies of the right - but anger is most definitely needed as well as justified. Maybe you are the kind of person who can get motivated to do what needs doing without it - but if so, you are a rarity. I think your 18th century revolutionaries got angry about taxation without representation; workers got angry about starvation wages and dangerous working conditions; abolitionists got angry about slavery; women got angry about being denied the vote; South African blacks and their allies got angry about apartheid - and in all these cases as well as many others, positive change did not happen until a lot of people got very angry indeed.
I don't like everything that appears on this blog by any means. Quite often I feel the way anger is expressed is excessive, and sometimes I say so - but it's given me a degree of optimism about the USA I have not felt since 1968. And the world desperately needs a USA moving in a very different direction from that taken in the last 40 years.
Nick: well said.
Or as a wise Englishman, Johnny Rotten, put it: "Anger is an energy."
For most of the past few decades, for all the many admirable qualities of its people and culture, the USA has, in global terms, been a force for evil: for injustice, environmental destruction, and the spread of religious extremism.
Do not advance your subjective opinion as if it's the Undisputable Truth. Many people think Islamic fundamentalism was and continues to be a far graver evil than American neoconservatism. The former philosophy results in (to give a single example) the essential enslavement of hundreds of millions of Muslim women. This is a deeply more serious issue than anything the Bush administration has ever done. Why are you so relentlessly tenacious in decrying the doings of the US government, while apparently ignoring the manifest evils of Islam?
Given all the wonderful stuff that comes out of America (still far and away the world leader in science and technology), there's no possible way one can be so certain it has been a net "force for evil". Islam, on the other hand...
Give it a fucking rest, J. Every thread is not a stone upon which to grind your axe.
J,
I was of course including the rise of Islamic fundamentalism under the heading "the spread of religious extremism". I suggest you study the degree to which the USA has armed and supported the Saudi wahhabis (and particularly the close ties between the ibn Saud and Bush dynasties), cooperated with the Afghan jihadis and the Pakistani ISI (which is deeply infiltrated by extreme jihadi elements). You might also consider that if the USA and Britain had not overthrown the secular democracy in Iran in 1953, Khomeini would never have come to power. Similarly, the invasion of Iraq gave both Sunni and Shia extremists enormous opportunities, as you yourself have noted (a serious gap in your historical and political ignorance there, I'm afraid).
That is already the case. In the First World, most people didn't know there were still creationists (except Jehovah's Witnesses perhaps) till the Creation "Museum" hit the media.
What about all those stories about people living for their revenge for years? What about revenge being a dish that is best served cold? As far as I understand it, anger can have literally insane patience.
Give it a fucking rest, J. Every thread is not a stone upon which to grind your axe.
Tell that to Nick Gotts. He's more obsessive in grinding his axe than I am in grinding mine. (In fact, I don't even have one. I'm merely opposing unreasonableness when I think I see it.)
". I suggest you study the degree to which the USA has armed and supported the Saudi wahhabis (and particularly the close ties between the ibn Saud and Bush dynasties), cooperated with the Afghan jihadis and the Pakistani ISI (which is deeply infiltrated by extreme jihadi elements).
All obfuscationist bullshit. The Islamists would obviously still be oppressing women even if it weren't for the US and Britain. Rather than admitting this, you choose to take another swipe at the West.
It's a funny coincidence, isn't it, that in Islamic countries there's always some faction of raving lunatics sufficiently powerful to fill the political vacuum created by Western intervention, and stay there.
J, the quote is "a force for evil", not "the biggest force for evil".
If you ask [anti-Evolution Americans], and I have bothered to ask hundreds or thousands over the past two years, many will tell you that more than anything else, it's the arrogant zealotry of cocksure ideologues that turns them off to evolution. They see people calling their intuitions and worldviews retarded and corrupt, and they march the other way.
If Slack's account were right, a similar proportion of the British public, or the New Zealand public, or the [European country drawn at random] public would also prefer Creationism to Evolutionary theory. But they don't. Are British / NZ / European ideologues less arrogant in their zealotry? Or is something missing from Slack's explanation... for instance, the role of aspiring theocrats in US politics?
Chris Crawford, you may not be aware of this, but your never get angry theory is currently being practiced by the fundamentalist mormon WOMEN & GIRLS in the polygamy sect in Texas. It's called 'keeping sweet' for the lord. Men and boys however are exempt from this commandment. You can read about it in the new book 'When Men Become Gods' by Stephen Singular.
Paul Johnson @ 102 Did "MICHAEL" Faraday, the English scientist, look like that! Fiction over fact, eh?
Nick,
See the overton window. By being extreme, wingnuts can pull the spectrum of publicly acceptable opinion rightwards.
Related is the goldilocks fallacy (given two opinions, the truth is somewhere in the middle) that is explicitly built into media concepts of "objectiveness". I've even heard a BBC journalist say, in as many words, "the truth, as always, is somewhere in between". Unfortunately this means the dishonest can pull the mean around more effectively than the honest.
Glenn Greenwald is a lefty advocating a more tit-for-tat approach.
Similarly, the invasion of Iraq gave both Sunni and Shia extremists enormous opportunities, as you yourself have noted (a serious gap in your historical and political ignorance there, I'm afraid).
You're playing the leftist extremist's version of "Political-Historic Join the Dots". An entertaining game, which doesn't require much thought. All you have to do is find some way in which a Western country once interfered in a now-barbaric Muslim country. Their current condition you then attribute to that past interaction (as if this logically follows).
In fifty years, people like you will be pin the inevitably medieval savagery in Iraq on Western intervention. "Iraq had a basically secular government under Saddam Hussein, and it was well on its way to becoming a very civilized country." Hence the role of the millions of Muslim extremists, who reveled in chaos as soon as the (incidentally evil) dictator was overthrown, is thereby exonerated.
I didn't go through the whole comment thread here, but the sense I get is that people who believe strongly in the wonder and power of science are trying to hash out some of the best ways to spread that kind of thing.
Has anyone here read Dave Niewert's blog?
dneiwert.blogspot.com
There's a whole section on the left side called "Bridges and Tunnels." Essentially, it's all about how to talk to conservatives who are turning away from right-wing authoritarian viewpoints. But it also offers a lot of insights for people here I think as to why people are like that in the first place.
I get really angry for instance at religious nutjobs on school boards. But if I want to get them voted out of office the next year, getting up in front of the board meeting and telling the whole town they are all idiots and stupid savages or insane for going to church probably won't help. If anything it would convince everyone not to vote for me or my candidate.
Yeah, I don't like that situation,. but that's political reality. It isn't about coddling creationists or whatever, it's about convincing people. And you know what? In politics, having the best argument or the facts on your side matters rather little. People don't make rational decisions all the time. Look at all the stuff you bought last year -- I bet about half was necessary to survive and the other half, not so much. But I doubt many people reading this blog make a rational (in an economic sense) decision to live like a monk.
You have to engage people somehow, otherwise you are left as a voice in the wilderness. I discovered that because I was and am a journalist and figured out that if you don't care about the people you cover, if you don't think they are just as good as you are and deserving of respect, your work will suffer, and suffer badly.
And just as PZ once said he had to convince people he didn't eat babies and breathe fire, not everyone who steps inside a church does either. Lemski, in fact, mentions in his response to the IDiots that when he was at a wedding he didn't go off about how the whole religion thing was nonsense, despite what he believes and knows. That's just being a decent person. Is that so hard?
Yes, there are real zealots you can't convince. But that isn't everybody, and if you think it is then we should all give up now, and everything PZ does here is worthless.
Preacher spouts public nonsense? Call him out. Point to the uglier implications if that the kind of preacher he is.
Somebody in the congregation asks you why scientists are so arrogant? I've found it effective to ask why they think that and get them to parse it out themselves. Gently. Acknowledge what their religion gives them. Draw them out.
Remember, most "religious" people aren't fundamentalists, nor do they think about what the bible or Koran or whatever says all the time. Just because 90% of Americans say they believe in god doesn't mean they are all born-again. In fact, that statistic tells you relatively little about religiosity, if all the kids I knew who went to Temple or Church (mostly Catholic) every week and on the Holy Days are anything to go by.
'm merely opposing unreasonableness when I think I see it.
with poor logic and little (to no) direct information.
I mean, if you want to continue to make an ass of yourself...
J, you mean kinda like how the US, the UK, and France were all to blame for WWII because the defeat of Germany in WWI created a power vacuum for the Nazis?
I wasn't aware that two wrongs made a right. Whether "the West's" or "Islam's" behaviour is worse does not excuse the other.
(Scare quotes as both are diverse)
Secular nationalist and socialist Arab oppositions have been crushed by the various dictatorships, often with western backing, including Iraq where Saddam's anti-union laws are still in effect. Unfortunately the theocrats are more robust.
J, you mean kinda like how the US, the UK, and France were all to blame for WWII because the defeat of Germany in WWI created a power vacuum for the Nazis?
Yes, that's a good example of what I mean. Blaming WW2 on the Allies would be absurd. It's very possible the blockading of Germany by the British, the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, etc., had a role in bringing about WW2. But blaming it exclusively on the Allies (the analogue of what Nick Gotts is doing by blaming Islamism on the West) would be crazy or downright intellectually insincere.
@Chris Crawford:
If you're angry, I suggest it's because your understanding of history is less certain than your grasp of biology.
not that I'm not just piling on, but I rather think that you have that exactly backwards.
It's a good knowledge of exactly what DOES happen when the pursuit of truth and knowledge is abandoned that makes us angry to see it happening yet again.
that you've become fatalistic about it is an interesting footnote, but that's about as much as your post contributed.
I'm curious, though....
where will you hide yourself when the shit goes down?
I have a challenge for PZ: write an article intended to actually convince theists that ID is false and evolution true without insulting anybody. Write an article that could go in a church bulletin. C'mon, PZ, show us how to do it.
you want THIS GUY:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/06/lack-of-faith-o.html
PvM= Pim van Meurs
IOW, there are already plenty of the kind of people you seek, writing the kind of articles you are looking for.
ask them if they think that approach is successful.
or better yet, look at the results of recorded (in the blogs) conversations they have had with creationists.
I have.
It's why I'm here.
Patricia @ 118 How convenient that men and boys are exempt from "keeping sweet" for their lord. And yet, the gender specific shit for religion is never questioned. Can you imagine if females of past history had tried to "change" their god to a female? Will we have as many females then as we do now? The male would have no compunction of committing mass female genocide to "keeping our god male", and thereby proving the fact that all religions are male created and dominated. Sexist insane bullshit!
Blaming WW2 on the Allies would be absurd.
Treaty of Versailles.
ever read it?
Mr. Slack clearly is someone who missed their real calling. With his talents, he really should have covered MLB for the NY Post.
No more horrible insult could I levy, in every way.
"I discovered that because I was and am a journalist and figured out that if you don't care about the people you cover, if you don't think they are just as good as you are and deserving of respect, your work will suffer, and suffer badly."
Maybe if more journalists spent more time doing what PZ does - criticizing religious stupidity - the 90% wouldn't feel so comfortable in their stupidity.
A person may deserve respect. Their ideas may be nutty and deserving of scorn.
Oh please, if we really gave a shit about abuse done to women we would've invaded practically any sub-saharan african country over Iraq which was infact far less Islamic before we invaded. If you want go read the link to the NYT article on the "uses" of rape in most of africa I quoted above or look up "female genital mutilation" on wiki if you really want to know about what's systematically done to women in some parts of the world. Makes the odd honor killing look like a fucking picnic. So enough with that "we just want to help the poor muslims out of barbarism" bullshit. Yeah, they need to get over Islam. But no, we didn't mess with them because we all of a sudden figured out how badly they treated women.
We invaded because fools like you J, are apparently scared of a couple thousand morons living in caves in the mountains of afganistan. As if a bunch of terrorists whose greatest accomplishment is taking over 4 commercial airplanes and running 3 of them into buildings are a serious threat to the USA or any other first world country. And then it's the liberals who are "the sissies" in this country.
It's at about the same level of "wtf are you thinking" when the same neocon idiots who claimed that we'd be greeted in Iraq as liberators with flowers call Obama "naive". Hasn't somebody shown them a damn mirror?
We invaded because fools like you J, are apparently scared of a couple thousand morons living in caves in the mountains of afganistan.
I haven't suggested anywhere that I am or ever was in favour of the Iraq war.
Several commentators have pointed out that rationalism doesn't work with bad people and so anger is the only way to accomplish anything with them. This is a variation of the old argument that 'those other people are subhuman monsters who cannot be dealt with reasonably; the only thing they understand is violence'. This kind of argument has been used for centuries to justify all sorts of barbaric behavior. The fundamental flaw here is the failure to realize that anger is a two-way street. Sure, if you get angry, you can impress yourself and your compatriots with your own destructive power, but what happens when the other side gets angry back? Anger begets anger. If you inflict anger on the other side, you're in no position to claim the moral high ground when they get angry right back.
Which raises my next question: does anger work on you? If the creationists get mad and call you ugly names, does that convince you to change your ways? If anger doesn't convince you, why do you think it will convince them?
Somebody made the excellent point that we're really making our case to the fence-sitters. We're never going to convince the True Believers and they're never going to convince us. I was successful with the two students I mentioned because, despite their upbringing, they were still forming their own thoughts. These are the people we want to reach. And I ask you, when you are observing a disagreement between two people, how often are you swayed by the anger of one as opposed to the cool rationalism of the other? Anger doesn't impress bystanders; it convinces them that you don't have a case and so you're just huffing and puffing.
Now I'd like to turn the tables and ask, "Why do some people feel a need to express anger in support of their convictions?" That is, what motivates anybody, be they creationist or evolutionist, to resort to anger? The answer, of course, depends upon the individual, but there are some vague generalizations that can be applied here to such people as a group. I think that the resort to anger arises in those who don't really believe in what they're saying, or at least aren't really sure of themselves. I see it as more of a social phenomenon. Does truth arise from your internal 'truth compass' or does it come from common consent? Most people have a strong sense of 'truth by common consent' -- if enough people believe it, it must be true. We see the simplest expression of this thinking in the behavior of children reacting to insults. If one 6 year old tells another 6 year old that he's stupid, then the victim is insulted and angry because he feels that some truth must be attached to any statement coming from any person. The victim feels a strong need to counter the insulting statement with his own refutation. Parents spend years trying to convince children that the mere articulation of a hurtful idea does not constitute reality. Most people develop some sense of this, but few people ever completely outgrow it. Thus, if enough creationists claim that evolution is wrong, a lot of evolutionists are somehow threatened by that belief. But if you believe in truth as something that's independent of social consent, then you don't feel threatened by the idiotic beliefs of others -- and you don't get angry.
Ultimately, none of these speculations on my part may apply to any individual reader. I therefore offer them not as final truth but as food for thought. I ask each angry reader to engage in a little introspection. Why are you angry? What's driving your anger? The more honest you can be with yourself, the more you will learn. I myself do not care to know the answers that you will find, nor will I argue them with you. If you wish to claim that your anger is pure and righteous, I won't try to change your mind. But I will leave you with this observation:
Almost everybody who's wrong gets angry. And many people who are right (and really KNOW that they're right) don't get angry.
Holbach, and anyone else interested in the subject of womens repression in religion there is a wonderful book that I find fastinating called 'When the Drummers Were Women' by Layne Redmond. It begins in the upper paleolithic era and ends with the domestication of women by christianity. It's one of the books that helped me deconvert.
The book on the mormons I mentioned is very good. You might give it a read Holbach. I can gurantee you if it was women having 15 or more husbands that compound would be closed right now instead of continuing business as usual.
Ah well, it's a question whether George Bush can do no more, in terms of "force for evil", or whether he could still make things worse ?
The drumbeats of an Israel Iran conflict are now sounding louder. Many members in the Knesset believe time is running out. They stress that there is now a "favorable window of opportunity" that will close with the US presidential election in November, and that Israel can only depend on American support for as long as current US President George W. Bush is still in charge in Washington. They are convinced that the country cannot truly depend on any of the candidates to succeed Bush in office....
Let us consider the consequences of such an atack ;
. oil at above 200$
. Iran counter strikes, unleash its supporters in Lebanon and Gaza (Hezbollah and Hamas) in a military confrontation with Israel. A broader war will follow in the Middle East.
. Iran would use both the threat of blocking the flow of oil out of the Gulf and an actual sharp reduction of its exports of oil
. meanwhile this would trigger a military reaction by the US that would start a sustained air-led bombing campaign against Iran's military capabilities
. such October surprise by Israel would also certainly lead to the election of McCain and defeat of Obama as a national security crisis of such an extent would doom the chances of Democrats to win the White House. So both Israel - that prefers McCain to Obama and is hurried to act as it is wary of the constraints that an Obama presidency may put on its ability to act against Iran - and the Bush administration would guarantee the election of McCain
So, let's see what happens next, but I think it's fair to say, that George still can fuck things up a little bit more.
The fly in your ointment Mr. Crawford is that the world is not populated entirely by Amish.
Oh please, if we really gave a shit about abuse done to women we would've invaded practically any sub-saharan african country over Iraq which was infact far less Islamic before we invaded. If you want go read the link to the NYT article on the "uses" of rape in most of africa I quoted above or look up "female genital mutilation" on wiki if you really want to know about what's systematically done to women in some parts of the world.
Actually, female genital mutilation is fairly widespread among Muslims even in Western Europe. In Britain, code for genital mutilation is "visit to an uncle in Bradford".
Whether you are for or against the specific war in Iraq is ultimately beside the point J. The point is that you, along with all the people who were all for going into Iraq agree that these Islamist terrorists are some great threat to the rest of the world.
And we're talking about a couple thousand people armed with old weapons (a good portion of which we gave them). This is the threat that we're supposed to worry about?
The only way in which they are dangerous is that nations who have actual power can (and have) overreacted and caused far more harm then those terrorists could ever have done by themselves. So yes, in that sense we in the US, especially led by W., are far more dangerous than a bunch of terrorists.
And Chris, for crying out loud look at some of Martin Luther King's speeches or practically any political leader who accomplished change for good or bad. Even people who advocated complete non-violence were quite angry and argumentative when faced with implacable opposition,. Cool logic is rarely enough to make people seriously motivated.
There is of course more to it then that - Malcolm X was probably angrier then MLK yet he had a smaller impact ultimately. But this is a matter of balance and knowing when to be passionate and angry and when to be cool. Thinking that being cool is always the right stance is no less stupid (although maybe less destructive), then thinking that anger is always the answer. Wisdom is in knowing what the appropriate attitude is in the situation.
J, if you're not even going to bother looking at something as simple as wikipedia there isn't much point in arguing. I'm sure that many muslim women in Europe and the middle east have one of the various procedures under the heading of genital mutilation. The thing is, there are some countries such as Sudan or Egypt where the statistics are that something like 80-90% of women have this done. It's not anywhere even close to that in the middle east or europe. And that's not even getting into systematic mass rape, that certainly doesn't happen on a daily basis in europe or the middle east.
You seem to be somewhat confused as to what some of us are angry about. The truth of evolution will not be threatened no matter how many believe otherwise. But the societal goals, working conditions, jobs and sometimes even persons of "evolutionists" can very well be threatened by people who hold silly beliefs.
Skipping the obvious Nazi reference, do you think that idiotic beliefs about abortion are completely harmless to women? Or idiotic beliefs about premarital sex to teenagers?
cocksure zealot - translation from a religious perspective: someone who disagrees with you and/or your ideas and has the temerity to use facts to back it up.
The thing is, there are some countries such as Sudan or Egypt where the statistics are that something like 80-90% of women have this done. It's not anywhere even close to that in the middle east or europe. And that's not even getting into systematic mass rape, that certainly doesn't happen on a daily basis in europe or the middle east.
You're right, but let's backtrack somewhat to see why you're missing the point.
I berate Nick Gotts for his turning a blind eye to Islamic fundamentalism while censuring the American government at every available opportunity. You then give an example of an evil wrought by Islam, trying to show that if the Iraq war were undertaken for the sake of liberating women, then some African Muslim state would have been invaded instead. But you were attacking a dummy of your own making, for I never once said anything supportive of the Iraq war. Rather, I drew attention to the horrors of Islam. By mentioning female circumcision, you were inadvertently arguing on my side.
Chris Crawford,
you seem to have a fairly one sided view of anger.
Each instance of anger demands you to make a choice, it can be for the parties to work together to better understand each other and constructively resolve their differences. Another choice may be to resort to violence, in this case of course, anger is fruitless.
Anger as a strategy of social influence proves very often succesful. There are many cases when anger expression is most effective in negotiations (see my post#105 study by Tiedens).
This is absolutely not true. It depends completely on the strategies chosen by the parties.
For example, it would be very naïve to believe that nobody has ever exagerated his anger in order to obtain his goal.
And you can be angry when you believe passionately that you are right and that people's errors are causing harm or injustice.
Well said PZ.
It's quite pathetic when people pander to creationists. What is the point of pointing out the flaws of science that scientists already know? And what is the point of saying the creationists are right for pointing out these flaws? It feels like captain obvious takes care of this already.
The only reason I can see to it is to give some reassurance that creationism is on the right path scientifically. Surely anyone writing the article would see how it's interpreted by the uneducated masses who want their beliefs validated. To other people the article is entirely redundant, unnecessary, stating the obvious. But to a believer, it's giving validation and hinting that their beliefs may have a point to them. Why do that other than to try and hurt the scientific position?
I see the same thing happening all the time with believers talking about carbon dating. Yes there are limitations to the process, there are checks we need to use, scientists know this already and take this into account. Do they honestly think that a preacher with no formal scientific training knows more about the process than scientists with years of training and experience? Again, just pointing out the flaws is pandering to the masses who want to see that the methodology that shows an earth older than 6,000 years to be unreliable.
"Look it has flaws!"
"We know, we take them into account when using the technique"
Gah!
And we're talking about a couple thousand people armed with old weapons (a good portion of which we gave them). This is the threat that we're supposed to worry about?
So far in this thread terrorism hasn't been mentioned by me. At the moment I don't think terrorism is much of a danger, to be honest. I'm far more concerned about (a) the rapidly growing population of Muslims in Western Europe, and (b) the possibility that other Islamic states than Pakistan will get their hands on nuclear weaponry. In fact, Pakistan alone is worrying enough, and it has already come close to employing its nuclear arsenal.
How do you make the case for rationality with something as irrational as anger?
Perhaps PT is on the right track in trying to dispel the "Big Tent" image the DI uses.
What can we do?
Here are a few thoughts-
1- Work on unifying rational thinkers. I realize that this is akin to herding cats, but it is the disunity that makes for easy pickings by irrationalists.
2- Stop "debating" creationists & theists. Period!
3- Divide the opposition. Key in on the sheer idiocy of Young earth creationism and really go after it.
4- Politicize. Stop allowing our elected officials to spout irrationality. Call out the Huckabees and Brownbacks and demand scientific legitimacy.
5- Again, Organize. If we can crash a poll, we should be able to crash an election.
None of these things require or include anger.
I agree that many irrationalists cannot be swayed with rationality, but neither can they be swayed with anger.
What thinkest thou?
Your idea is good in theory (not scientific) Mr Franklin, but I see the problem of stopping debating them is going to only exacerbate the problem. Leaving their assertions unanswered is only going to lead people to think those assertions can't be answered and we will see more ignorance perpetuate because the non-committal will look at the unanswered creationist assertions as flaws.
When I debate these people, I don't expect to change their mind. The ones who debate are hardened believers and nothing I say can change that. It's for those who are uncommitted or unwillingly ignorant (don't know better) to learn that there are answers for the assertions. Educate, not indoctrinate
Ok... so now that you've finally deigned to actually address the specific supposed treat posed by islamists instead of speaking in useless generalities and making up silly explanations for our involvement like the claim that we care about women's rights around the world. It doesn't take much knowledge to realize that as bad as islamic countries are, they are far from the worst when it comes to being horrible.
So let's see.. you're worried about muslims in europe, why? Certainly there are cultural problems in europe over this, both because muslim people don't seem to want to integrate in western society, and because europeans are far less culturally open than they like to admit, especially compared to the US. However, how is this anything other then an internal threat to the EU countries with large immigrant populations?
Then we get to nukes. Here I am willing to admit that if terrorists could infact get their hands on real nuclear weapons that would be a serious threat. If there was any credible reason to believe that could happen anytime soon, then we'd have something to worry about. Fortunately there isn't - the whole Bush propaganda on the issue was just that - propaganda.
And of course the biggest threat in terms of terrorists getting nukes currently is North Korea, not Pakistan or any other muslim nation.
Why do you think that being islamist has much to do with being able to and wanting to have nukes? Pretty much every state that feels threatened wants nukes, whether they are threatened by the US or anybody else (pakistan and india developed nukes primarily as a deterrent against each other, and probably China to a degree). And the main requirement to getting them is having a big, and at least somewhat technological country (or being crazy and sheltered by China in the particular case of north korea). Something which most islamist states are not.
@ 145 - precisely my point about anger (thanks for making it, gj)
To Chris and others: being angry doesn't necesarily mean that you are red in the face and yelling - its still possible to be angry while being polite and collected (anyone angry about gas prices?)
Also, anything you say to most religious people will be taken as anger, regardless of tone, unless you compromise. Daniel Dennett made a great point on this when he was writing his book: he had religious students look at it over and over again, constantly revising, until he realized that you cant say anything bad about religion without it being interpreted as anger. The only things they dont consider to be 'angry' are compromising and concilliatory. So by saying that we are angry, we are just calling a spade a spade, and saying that we aren't going to meet you halfway on this. (Great point to whoever mentioned the flaw of the Goldilocks principle)
Finally, when your discussing religion it goes way beyond just teaching creationism. Religion has been responsible for countless murders, torture, and child rape, so there is some justification in being a little angry about it.
Ironically, the best response to this post would be "Amen, brother!"
Damn good point about what Daniel Dennett said Jason!
In case you're wondering...or not, Chris, the person I'm most angry with, now, after 50 years of "believing" is ME, for being so gawddamned stupid. I was the child taught to believe, I was the girl taught to obey, if you don't like it that I get angry - tough shit.
Keep sweet Chris, I'm gonna fight.
I personally thought the rape metaphor was the least controversial part of my comment. You don't like my metaphor, that's OK. But the notion that I am trivializing rape is absurd. I like the language police just as little as George Carlin did.
Is "very, very annoyed and frustrated" okay, rather than "angry", PZ?
I will do as SC @#1 did as I also posted a long comment:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/what_is_wrong_with_journalists.php#comment-948273
Also, as for anger: if you're not angry, it probably means you're just not paying attention.
As for convincing IDiots of the veracity of evolution: Louis Agaziz visited the Galapagos Islands in the last year of his life. He did not change his mind.
The struggle is more to educate those who have the potential to learn and to grow beyond dogma. I doubt that anyone will (or is really trying to) convert ideologues attached by the hip to dogma who demonstrate intellectual (and other) dishonesty, irrationality and willful ignorance.
Slack:
"If you ask them, and I have bothered to ask hundreds or thousands over the past two years, many will tell you that more than anything else, it's the arrogant zealotry of cocksure ideologues that turns them off to evolution."
And it never occurred to Slack to respond to these people: so you are not sure of your beliefs? You are not zealous to convert others?
The arrogant ignorant idiocy of "journalists" (i.e. stenographers) never fails to amaze me.
Yeah, that Newton was such a cocksure arrogant asshole... screw gravity.
:|
So now we learn that Slack has delicate sensibilities. That he cannot handle criticism.
Mr. Slack: would you like a hanky, smelling salts, and directions to the nearest fainting couch? Please, get a thick skin and learn to deal with criticism. For your own good.
Worthless stenographers. Why not just hire a parrot to take Slack's job? It would be far cheaper. And at the least the parrot would not have an attitude problem.
Judging by his response (if we accept its explanations), Slack's article could be summed up "Why can't we all just get along?". Which would be fine if he wasn't painting one side as arrogant whilst describing the others as misunderstood whilst apparently claiming not to be arrogant himself whilst also dismissing the "other side" as largely irrelevant.
Actually, after re-reading his response, I really don't know what Slack's point was. Maybe it was "Love thine (stupid, irrelevant, ignorant, oppressive) neighbours"?
A couple of responses here, in no particular order.
One of the readers cites the social utility of anger as demonstrated in a scientific study of negotiation strategies. I do not question correctness of the study, but I do challenge its utility. The study demonstrates that anger matched against submissiveness yields positive fruit for the anger-user. What the study does not address is the result of matching anger against anger. I think we can all agree that anger against anger yields undesirable results. So, a negotiator entering a negotiation has two choices: use anger or don't use anger. If they use anger and their interlocutor doesn't use anger, then they gain. If they use anger and their interlocutor also uses anger, then they lose big-time. If they use rationalism and the interlocutor uses anger, then they lose. And if they use rationalism and the interlocutor uses rationalism, then they both gain big-time. (I hope everybody can see the reasoning on this last combination.) So this is really a variation on the Prisoner's Dilemma: if they both cooperate, they both win; if they both defect, they both lose, and if one defects and the other cooperates, the defector wins and the cooperator loses.
Several readers have made the point that ignorance produces unhappy or unjust consequences (e.g., attitudes towards abortion or women), and that these injustices justify anger. I counsel precision of thinking here: is the proper target of anger the people who create the injustice or the injustice itself? If you want to hit the target, you have to pick the right target. Now, if you have the power to destroy the people who perpetrate the injustice, then yes, anger at them has utility. But you don't have the power to kill or destroy these people, so it's a waste of effort to get mad at them. You should focus your energies on the target that you can hit: the policy, not the person.
Lastly, I admonish readers of the long-term danger to the self arising from indulgence in anger. Anger is a psychological poison: it does to the mind something like what amphetamines do to the body. In small doses, it energizes and empowers. But repeated use over a long period is destructive to health. If you freely indulge your anger, then you will become an angry old person, crabbed, unhappy, and repulsive to those around you. If you can outgrow your anger (and many people do learn to outgrow their anger as they age), then you need not face such a fate.
Ok... so now that you've finally deigned to actually address the specific supposed treat posed by islamists instead of speaking in useless generalities and making up silly explanations for our involvement like the claim that we care about women's rights around the world.
Either you're not reading properly, or that's a barefaced lie. I did not claim that "our involvement" (presumably you mean in Iraq, which I didn't mention) is due to caring about women's rights. In this thread I haven't tried to justify Western involvement in anything.
It doesn't take much knowledge to realize that as bad as islamic countries are, they are far from the worst when it comes to being horrible.
Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that. For instance, the five countries that come bottom in Human Development Index are African Muslim-majority countries (Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, and Mali).
So let's see.. you're worried about muslims in europe, why? Certainly there are cultural problems in europe over this, both because muslim people don't seem to want to integrate in western society, and because europeans are far less culturally open than they like to admit, especially compared to the US. However, how is this anything other then an internal threat to the EU countries with large immigrant populations?
Yes, Europeans are so provincial and reluctant to accept outsiders that a knighthood was conferred on Iqbal Sacranie, a leading "moderate" Muslim who stated on record that "Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for [Salman Rushdie]". I seriously doubt that Western Europe is less "culturally open" than America. The entire problem, I believe, is that Europeans are tolerant to the point of bending over backwards.
And yes, this is an internal problem. I haven't suggested otherwise.
And of course the biggest threat in terms of terrorists getting nukes currently is North Korea, not Pakistan or any other muslim nation.
The philosophy of "Muslim brotherhood" is what makes them so dangerous. They really are a force of a billion (sometimes warring among themselves, but still an immeasurably greater power than little North Korea).
I'm with you on that. Tolerance has gone way too far, and really in that case should be called submission. The fear of being seen as intolerant is justified, as we can't have outright negativity in our politicians based on xenophobia (still okay to be that way against homosexuals for some reason). But to tolerate the intolerant is not showing any respect whatsoever and by making concessions that allow an ass-backward culture to be in a society but segregate themselves based on archaic rituals is never going to be good for the future of said societies.
i.e. We shouldn't submit to the will of Islam, if they want respect they have to learn that respect is being told no. Otherwise they are just a spoilt child exploiting parents who just want to keep it happy because they don't want to deal with tantrums. But while there are those complaining that any attempt to deny Islam is xenophobia or intolerant, we'll see more pandering to the masses. I'm all for Islam and muslims to be in society, I'm just not for turning a blind eye to cultural practices that degrade human rights and destroy civil liberties. If a culture does destroy the notions of freedoms in a free society, then the culture needs to change to be a part of that society.
I'm not saying Christianity (or any other religion) is any better, in fact I feel that Christianity is a far bigger threat on my civil liberties given that they've figured out that the democratic system is a far more effective means of achieving their ends, I'm just saying that what is happening in Europe with Islam is not tolerance in any way shape or form. It's submission and segregation masked as tolerance.
Call me crazy, but I'd think that arrogant zealotry from a cocksure ideologue would be exactly the kind of thing that these fools would fit right in with. I mean, look at how they respond to their deity.
The "cocksure ideologue" is not an apt description of evolutionists - a more accurate desciription would be "facts gleaned from years of rigorous scientific research." It baffles me that religious zealots/creationists/other nutcases can claim to represent the majority of America (or the world) and yet claim to be the oppressed minority at the same time. And anyone who's an atheist knows that the true "cocksure ideologues" are religous nuts who feel compelled to tell me I'm going to hell and I'm wrong and evil and lacking morals, etc etc , even though I've just explained that I don't believe in their heaven or hell and I'm just as moral as the next man. I've been an atheist since the age of 12, and I have had more condescending comments from relgious zealots that anyone (other than other atheists) can imagine. Religious folks are not oppressed, they are just angry that their "agenda" is being stalled due to that whole separation of church and state thing. Folks, you and your children have a place to preach,discuss, worship your particular brand of lunacy, and it's called church. So leave it out of the public square, the schools, and conversations with atheists. I used to respect their wacky beliefs and try to simply explain that I disagree with them. The time for diplomacy is over in this realm. Unless god shows up at my door with a box of cheap wine and a meatless pizza, I frankly don't give a damn about you and your beliefs.
Oh, and "thank the heavens" for PZ Myers...otherwise I'd think I was alone in being angry and pissed off.
CJ
Call me crazy, but I'd think that arrogant zealotry from a cocksure ideologue would be exactly the kind of thing that these fools would fit right in with. I mean, look at how they respond to their deity.
It's just projection; and it's not their deity they respond to (since it doesn't exist), it's the reality-based authority figures in their lives (parents, peers, pastor).
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/12/psychological-defense-mechanisms.h…
Writing from Europe, and being a European myself, America's ongoing discussion on creationism always fascinates me. I usually refrain from intervening, cause I know Americans are tricky when it comes to comparisons which are perceived as unfavourable to them (not the other way round, as can be seen in some of the posts in this thread).
Some of you seem to ignore that genital mutilation is a severely punished crime in Europe. Other posts mention the more American, less European country in Europe, as an example of too much tolerance (whatever it might be). Finally some of you come to the point of saying that "Europeans are provincial and reluctant to accept outsiders". Apart from the fact that we've been accepting outsiders for several thousands years, and some considerations on America's tolerance of outsiders that I'd rather leave out, I wonder what all this's got to do with the point at stake.
And the point at stake is not that evolutionism is tolerated in Europe, but the fact that 90% of Europeans would find laughable that biological evolution is questioned. Even Catholic schools teach evolution as a matter of fact. As you've probably read, the protestant churches in Germany and doing their best to prevent the construction of a theme park on Creationism by some crazy Swiss or other.
So, sorry if I sound 'provincial' to you, and patronizing to me, but what really concerns Europeans, more than the beliefs of a small minority of Muslims amongst us (who sincerey speaking does not have any impact in our everyday lfe), is the fact that most of the population in the country who's leading the world is prone to such irrational, potentially dangerous attitudes. Genital mutilation can, and is, effectively dealt with by the police, irrationatily can't... and you have the nukes.
...meh, there are better descriptions of projection out there:
http://www.heretical.com/sexsci/bpsychol.html
and a spin on it dedicated to the often viewed internet version of projection:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/psychological_defenses_projection_ide…
...and just to be even more clear, I in no way endorse "Dr. Sanity" on ANYTHING else he has to say, it was just a good list of psychological definitions.
frankly, beyond that, most of his conclusions are entirely without merit.
It cannot be done. The only acceptable article would be a complete capitulation. Anything else would be an "arrogant lie" as we questioned (non-existent) the word of God.
You write for Disney? In European derived cultures, we've had cultural issues like this for HUNDREDS of years, easily dating back to the Renaissance.
Fear of change. Longing for the idealized past. And how they paralyze individuals and cultures into reactive, retrograde states.
The Romans had them. The Greeks are still imprisoned by them. Jews, Europeans, Chinese, Japanese all had/have them.
But the best example is the Muslims. At one time they had taken the mantle of science from the Greeks, bolstered it with India and Chinese learning and substantially improved it, really making it their own. Even to the extent that they laid down the ground work of experimental method found in modern science. Then (to really, really sum it up) some reactionary Muslim wanker, wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers and won the doctrinal war between CONSERVATIVE RELIGOIN and LIBERAL RELIGION, all because he got offended. The long-term result was, essentially, the Arabs gave up science and went backwards because they spent their energy placating (and lived in fear of) their religious orthodoxy. Ultimately, we have some math terms and the names of stars by which to remember them. But they have been long eclipsed as they failed to keep up with the rest of the world.
MUCH LIKE THE RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES WOULD HAVE US DO NOW!
And this retreat from science is what you're trying to enable through your "politeness." You don't realize it. But it's what you're doing.
Which makes you as dangerous as them. Being a Quisling through good intentions is still being a Quisling.
...I'm just saying that what is happening in Europe with Islam is not tolerance in any way shape or form. It's submission and segregation masked as tolerance.
I would go even further and say that this unnatural tolerance toward primitive Muslim behaviour is downright condescending.
"It's too much for me to expect you Muslims to behave in a civilized manner, so I won't hold you to the same standards as extremist white-skinned groups (e.g. evangelical Christians or the British National Party)."
That's essentially what these politically correct apologists for Islam seem to feel.
Holy Christ, you're a wanker. The benefits of anger are quite well known. Even anger management specialists admit the same:
See. You pissed me off. I did a google search so I could break your idiotic new-age space-puppy stupidity off in your ass so that you might see just how ignorant you are and pull your head out of your ass.
And, for the record, anger has driven me to some outstanding accomplishments in life. Accomplishments that I could not have achieved without anger. Because I can channel my anger and use it as a positive force in self-motivation.
Unlike those who can't admit their anger and turn to self-abuse and sit on the pity-pot all day long. Woe! Woe is me! Boo hoo!
"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
Davison has it right.
[i]And this is precisely where Slack is most unsatisfying. He claims to be trying to understand the creationist mindset, yet all he offers is credulous tripe in which he demonstrates that he hasn't thought things through.[/i]
Sounds like he's got the creationist mindset exactly right.
Roy
Chris Crawford,
Again, making unwarranted general statements about anger. It's becoming a habit now.
Have you never seen two person getting really angry at each other, even mad, even to the level of crying and being very emotional and both using this as a trigger to work together to better understand each other and constructively resolve their differences. Without resorting to violence ?
You must be living on a cloud or something.
Waitaminnut!... Is it possible for his space-puppy stupidity and his head to occupy the same space at the same time? Any physicists care to chime in?
;^)
politically correct apologists for Islam
If I didn't already know you were a moron, J., your use of the braindead sneer "politically correct" would have told me.
I don't for one moment believe you are genuinely concerned about the oppression Muslim women face, since you have at no point suggested any action that would help them confront or escape it - you just use it as a convenient stick to beat people you despise for other reasons. What do you really think the reaction of a Muslim woman being ill-treated by her husband or forced into marriage by her father is likely to be to your anti-Muslim tirades? I bet you've never even thought about it.
Before seeing your latest piece of garbage, I had intended to post a comment simply listing a few points on which I agree with you, so you could stop pretending I'm an apologist for Islam, so here we are:
1) Islam is a false and dangerous belief-system, which the world would be better off without.
2) Fundamentalist Islam is utterly vile, particularly in its treatment of women.
3) Muslims in Europe should be subject to the same law as everyone else. In particular preparations for terrorism, incitement to murder, GBH (in the form of female genital mutilation), forced marriage, rape in marriage and domestic violence are serious crimes which should always be prosecuted and for which heavy sentences are appropriate.
4) Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons is one of the greatest dangers the world faces.
wow Nick, how is J going to understand that you can both condemn Islam and Christianity, that seems a really difficult concept to grasp isn't it ?
That American policies, rather than trying to reduce the influence of religious fundamentalism (whether at home, Christian fundamentalism, or abroad, Islamic fundamentalism) have been exacerbating it ? Also a difficult concept to grasp.
No, J lives in a world where Islamic fundamentalism exists by nature and doesn't seem to want to look very far into the factors that favorize its expansion.
Concerning Islamic terror*: it's extremely dubious to blame Islam for terrorism. There are always easily identifiable secular grievances involved. Even suicide terror is not uniquely Islamic. I'm sure I've linked to Dying to Win before, the only large study of suicide terror by an academic of which I'm aware. Money quotes: ""The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world's religions. . . . Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland"" and ""Religion plays a role in suicide terrorism, but mainly in the context of national resistance" and not Islam per se but "the dynamics of religious difference" are what matter"
I hope I don't need to explain that causation is not justification, and that two wrongs do not make a right.
*What definition of terrorism are we using? Does this definition include the action of the US, Israel and other Western nations? If not, would Muslims also use terror if they had access to fourth-generation jet fighters and tanks?
"we evolutionists"? Do biologists really refer to themselves thusly?
amk:
terrorist (noun): Person in possession of a bomb, but not owning a plane to drop it from.
Concerning nukes in Muslim nations: obviously this largely relates to theocratic Iran. Supreme Jurisprudence Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa (a formal religious ruling, not usually a call for an assassination) declaring nuclear weapons to be against Islam. So if Iran really is a rigid Islamic theocracy, it will never have nukes.
Iran also declined to use chemical weapons against Iraq.
Ok J, so you think islamists are a great threat and yet you apparently are never in favor of our involvement in anything relating to them. Maybe you should figure out what you do actually want done and propose it, instead of whining about islam and then denying your support for any anti-islam actions.
I think the "muslim brotherhood" thing is particularly funny at the end. Yeah, they are a billion strong. We're 2 billion at least, and armed so much better then them that there is no comparison whatsoever. Or maybe you missed the part where Israel has survived despite being completely outnumbered and surrounded for all of it's history. Maybe we should stop getting scared of our shadow.
As to the situation in Europe, while at the high "intellectual" levels, there is indeed an absurd and just flat out stupid level of tolerance towards Muslim extremism, at the lower social levels that's just not the case. The proportion of muslims in prisons compared to the general population is similiar to blacks in the US. There are nationalistic parties gaining power in many countries, and alot of antagonism towards any immigrants (like say eastern europeans which is what I happen to be, although I've lived in the US half my life).
Chris Crawford @ #135:
>Almost everybody who's wrong gets angry. And many people who are right (and really KNOW that they're right) don't get angry.
So if you see, for example, your wife and children being beaten by a bunch of gangbanger thugs for a laugh (just for the sake of example), you would not get angry?
I mean, I would probably go ballistic-- you know, the kind of ballistic that lets any Clark Kent pick up a crowbar and turn into King Leonidas.
But maybe that's just wrong and misguided of me, but I do know that the times I got into fights where I was protecting my bodily integrity, anger was what tipped me over the edge from "victim" to "threat".
Anger is a tool. You are advocating the abandonment of that tool because you don't like the way it feels, the same way that IDists want people to abandon reason because they don't like the places it leads them to.
Naturally, of course, you're not going to get mad at me, right? I mean, for you to do that you'd have to admit that I'm right and maybe you were wrong.
Ten points for Patricia.
Nick Gotts (@183): And here I was thinking Ambrose Bierce was dead!
Bill - I confess it's not my own, though I can't recall where I heard it.
Notkieran @ #186
You are right if given that situation it would be almost impossible not to get angry, and even homocidal.
But we aren't talking about a response to violence, the question is - "How can we best change the minds of irrational theists?" Does anger work in that situation?
Patricia @ #138
Would getting angry at the Amish cause them to drive a nice shiny new Corvette, or even a Prius?
The irrationality of religion disturbs me greatly. Violence and crimes committed in the name of religion (or otherwise) make me real angry. Will reciprocated anger change minds? Will it further justice? I don't think so.
Does education change minds? Demonstrably, yes.
Nick, you get points anyway for having the wit to repeat it. It can't be actual Bierce, though: While he lived to see airplanes, he didn't live to see bombs dropped from them.
PS: I don't mean to be coming off as some sort of Bierce expert here. I only really know him from references in other authors' work (plus having read the ubiquitous "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" in high school).
Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich. - Peter Ustinov
wikiquote isn't helping me find Nick's quote.
@192. The wording was probably slightly different in whatever the source was. Might have been from a British TV satire show I think, quite a few years ago.
Ben Franklin, you ask:
>But we aren't talking about a response to violence, the question is - "How can we best change the minds of irrational theists?" Does anger work in that situation?
Chris Crawford was making statements about anger. I was making the case that the opposite is not so.
But yes, anger is _required_ as a prerequisite to changing other people's minds-- if we did not care about the outcome, then we would not move to change it in any sufficient detail.
And anger, like all emotions, is a motivator. Why are we worked up over the issue of fundamentalists? Because we're angry. Why do fundamentalists manage to drag their flock with them? Because they can make their flock angry at US.
Which means that one way to fight them would be to make the public angry at THEM. Not by being angry, but by making the populace angry.
As I said, anger is a tool. Anger gives you the strength to act, and to deny that it can ever do anything is to simply be negative about the human condition.
But I reiterate my main point: If we weren't angry, why would we be acting to change things? Just as a simple example from my life:
You think it's comfortable being the only openly atheist teacher in a Christian college? It feels like being the black dude in a Klan meeting.
What I mean to append to that last post was:
If I weren't angry about the whole thing, why would I do it? I could just smile and nod about "faith". But I _am_ angry, because I can see what it's doing to the students.
If the Amish did not just want to personally opt out of driving, but would pester driver's ed teachers, compare them to Nazis because Nazis had Volkswagens, and try to introduce legislation that would replace driver's ed with horse harnessing classes, are you sure that angry reactions would be entirely counterproductive?
Notkieran, you point out (quite rightly) that anger is of great utility when engaging in physical violence. That's because anger causes the release of adrenaline, giving strength to the muscles. It has a number of other physiological effects that are all of real benefit to somebody who is about to engage in physical violence.
The problem here is, if you're NOT going to engage in physical violence, then all those physiological effects are not just wasted effort, they positively get in the way. After all, if those physiological effects were always useful, why wouldn't we just maintain them 100% of the time? Anger's entire point and purpose is to carry out physical violence.
Now, if you propose to go around beating up or killing people you disagree with, then anger would indeed be a very useful emotion. But the problem is that we live in a civilized society, and if you go around beating up or killing people because they disagree with you, you'll just end up in jail. So the problem remains: how do we cope with people who disagree with us? Anger just doesn't cut the mustard here.
You repeat the statement that anger is a motivating force. This is correct -- but your first error is the belief that it is the ONLY possible motivating force. Do you think that Mahatma Ghandi was motivated by anger? Albert Schweitzer? Charles Darwin? Henry David Thoreau? Albert Einstein? James Clark Maxwell? William Blake? Goethe? Mozart? Neil Armstrong? If you read the writings of these people, you'll find little if any anger in them, yet each of these people was motivated to perform extraordinary feats.
But the greater error is the assumption that the applicability of anger is universal. As I pointed out, anger is useful for physical violence. But the specific problem we're dealing with is convincing potential creationists that evolution is correct. I've done a good deal of teaching, and I can assure you that getting mad at students and yelling at them is not an effective educational technique.
Lastly, you ask whether I'm angry with you. No, I'm not. I see you exactly the same way I see my misinformed students: somebody who doesn't understand an important idea, somebody who is in need of patient explanation, not a verbal whack on the side of the head. I know that I won't convince you in this limited venue, but I do expect that bystanders reading our exchange will learn from it.
The problem here is, if you're NOT going to engage in physical violence, then all those physiological effects are not just wasted effort, they positively get in the way. After all, if those physiological effects were always useful, why wouldn't we just maintain them 100% of the time? Anger's entire point and purpose is to carry out physical violence.
I know from personal experience that in a political meeting, anger can both motivate me to get up and speak from the floor, and make me far more eloquent than I would otherwise be. Of course excessive anger would just lead me to shout or swear, but it really is just silly to claim that anger is good for nothing but physical violence. There is a well-known regularity in psychology, that for most activities, graphing performance against arousal (anger is one form of arousal) gives an "inverted U" curve (just google that phrase for more). That is, there is an optimum level of arousal - higher or lower will give poorer performance. The location of the top of the U varies with the task.
And yes, I most certainly do think Gandhi was motivated by anger - controlled, focused anger, but anger, certainly.
Chris Crawford,
we're riding on some high horse arent we Mister....
//I know that I won't convince you in this limited venue, but I do expect that bystanders reading our exchange will learn from it.//
Learn what? Maybe this ?
//anger causes the release of adrenaline, giving strength to the muscles. It has a number of other physiological effects that are all of real benefit to somebody who is about to engage in physical violence.//
Youre confusing that with the Incredible Hulk's little genetic problem I think Sir,I happen to administer Adrenaline to people all the time,on a daily basis,and noone has ever gotten up and started to throw trolleys around shouting "Im so angry I want to kill something now".
Anger=Adrenaline=physical violence= I CALL BULLSHIT MISTER
Man, I just love to get angry as my comments attest to on this site, the majority of them directed at insane religion. And boy do I feel good! I just love to vent my anger at those people who intend to make this world less than comfortable, and if there was a class of humans who engender to achieve this goal, then it is the religionists who insist on afflicting their insane puke on all of us whether we like it or not. My stance in this matter is well known on this site and my free exercise thereof makes many members uneasy and caution me to tone it down, not so much that it may affect my health but that it will not help with our cause in dealing with the insane retards. My very words are angry, as the preceding will attest to, and sometimes the aggregate diatribe is decidely so. And believe me, I feel no pang of remorse or physical or emotional deleterious effects, but just a kind of euphoria that good old evolution has equipped me with to deal with wrongs, both actual or imaginary. How quaint that I can still do all the daily chores that need to be done, eat, sleep, read, listen to music, marvel at the great Hubble Space Telescope's fantastic pictures, and still rant with anger at what bugs me and continue to enjoy physical and emotional health. Anger has no effect on me whatsoever, but just serves as a conduit to blast away at those things that need a good verbal blasting. So whether I blast away at some retard with anger or a smile, the results are the same, but the anger tends to rivet your target a little better than smiling at it. So Chris Crawford, your evaluation is obviously not meant to cover everyone with the stigma against anger that you so wrongly espouse. Speak for yourself, as I have done here.
CC: Do you think that Mahatma Ghandi was motivated by anger
Actually, I'd bet that Gandhi was motivated by anger, which he sublimated quite well. The question isn't the motivation, but the application. If you read his autobiography, he was explicitly very angry at himself for having sex with his wife while his father died, and he transformed that anger into a religious commitment to ascetism. He doesn't explicitly say the same about social justice, but my reading was that he applied the same psychological techniques for the rest of his life, translating his anger into active non-violent resistance (self-denial mapped onto the social sphere).
Anger isn't just for physical violence. It is part and parcel of the human mechanism of confrontation and competition. The scientists you mention were filled with a competitive spirit that is partly rooted, evolutionarily, in battle (and therefore in anger). What we do with that anger, though, is another question entirely -- we can repress it and kill ourselves, we can naively express it and kill others, or we can sublimate it into productive work.
Shorter Chris Crawford :
Fear leads to anger,anger leads to hate,hate leads to...the dark side !
Nick, in regard to your statement:
I know from personal experience that in a political meeting, anger can both motivate me to get up and speak from the floor, and make me far more eloquent than I would otherwise be.
I suggest that your assessment of your eloquence is very subjective. People who have taken any of a number of mind-altering drugs feel that they are more creative and more insightful than they are normally. Of course, they are neither more creative nor more insightful, but they sure feel that way. Perhaps this is what is going on with you. My own experience is that when I see, hear, or read somebody who's angry, they convince me of nothing more than that they are angry. This can be a very satisfying experience for the speaker, yet it accomplishes nothing with those who already disagree. Patrick Henry made a great speech, but it didn't turn anybody around -- he was preaching to the choir. Rabble-rousing only works with rousable rabbles.
And yes, I most certainly do think Gandhi was motivated by anger - controlled, focused anger, but anger, certainly.
Wow, that's a surprising statement, give his whole non-violent approach. One of Ghandi's most common admonitions to his followers was to not allow anger to intrude. His primary tactic, over and over again, was to show that the OTHER side was angry, and that his side was peaceful. That's what made it so effective. Have you any evidence to support your assertion that Ghandi was angry?
I suggest that your assessment of your eloquence is very subjective.
I suggest that your arrogance is astounding. I can judge my eloquence from audience reaction, and that of the person to whom my question or point is addressed.
Wow, that's a surprising statement, give his whole non-violent approach.
It's surprising to you, because you confuse anger with violence.
"I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world."
-- from Gandhi the Man, by Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press.
CC: My own experience is that when I see, hear, or read somebody who's angry, they convince me of nothing more than that they are angry.
It appears that you have the anger problem -- a pathological fear of anger if you can't separate the substance from the rhetoric. A mid-westerner by any chance?
I ask because my experience has been that American mid-westerners have a very subtle expression of anger and conflict, which can lead them to severely overestimate the anger in folks from outside their cultural group. They expect physical violence from very low levels of expression of anger. I find it problematic because it makes communication over issues of equity very difficult, since everything has to be kept at the level of nuance which can often lead to misunderstanding.
NG: Awesome pwnage.
Chris Crawford,
#14
#87
#135
#162
#197
All of these statements are absolutely baseless once you understand that each instance of anger demands that the parties make a choice. You should not judge people based on their anger, the display of an emotion, but on the choice they make to deal with it. It can be for the parties to work together to better understand each other and constructively resolve their differences. In this case it may have a beneficial outcome. Another choice may be to resort to violence, in this case it usually has a detrimental outcome.
Can we move on ?
This discussion is starting to be poisoned by anger, so I'm going to terminate my participation in it. I'll close by noting that, while some people have presented arguments of greater or lesser value in establishing that anger under some circumstances has some utility, nobody has even made the attempt to demonstrate that the use of anger against somebody who disagrees with you has any value whatsoever.
Don't go away mad; just go!
Clearly we evolved emotions like anger to make us less effective at dealing with situations.
Apparently that is Chris's position. Either he's anti-evolution, or he's self-contradictory.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
CC: #207
This discussion is starting to be poisoned by anger, so I'm going to terminate my participation in it.
So I guess my analysis stands? If anything, the commenters at the end of the thread have made a very strong effort to not express anger explicitly, in deference to CC's delicate sensibility, but CC seems unable to deal with/respond to conflict and confrontation effectively. He is clearly over-sensitive to any expression of conflict ("poisoned"?), and is unable to separate it from the substance of the argument.
This is why the concept of Ad Hominem was evented --- even though I usually disdain an over-sensitivity to ad-hominem, the point of the "fallacy" is to not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
It is a larger cultural issues for Americans. So many of us show this over-sensitivity and fear of conflict -- it makes it extremely difficult for many to take any kind of concerted political action, which of course must always have an element of conflict. I've seen it over and over again, particularly among middle-class Americans who would rather roll-over to their opponents than risk looking "angry" (bitter anyone?).
On top of that, repressing their actual anger, it often gets displaced on folks who aren't their real targets, creating a perfect tool for demagogues.
Benjamin Franklin - I beg your pardon? The point you addressed to me went over my head by about 12 inches.
If I didn't already know you were a moron, J., your use of the braindead sneer "politically correct" would have told me.
Actually, the braindead morons are the ones who don't recognize the value of that phrase.
Despite what you say, you are an apologist for Islam insofar as you persistently try to shift the conversation to America-bashing whenever I try to criticize Islam. Just as you did earlier on in this thread.
Ok J, so you think islamists are a great threat and yet you apparently are never in favor of our involvement in anything relating to them. Maybe you should figure out what you do actually want done and propose it, instead of whining about islam and then denying your support for any anti-islam actions.
You don't have a single fucking clue, Corolis. You are continually chasing phatom arguments and imputing to me things I never said. Either read my posts or don't bother responding.
The main "proposals" I made are: (a) stop trying to jumble up the discussion whenever Islam is criticized, e.g. by publicly playing "Political-Historic Join the Dots"; and (b) recognize that the evils of American neoconservativism pale in comparison to those of Islam, which have already resulted in the essential enslavement of millions of women.
I don't for one moment believe you are genuinely concerned about the oppression Muslim women face, since you have at no point suggested any action that would help them confront or escape it - you just use it as a convenient stick to beat people you despise for other reasons.
There's little that can be done to help them, as religious fundamentalists are impervious to reason. What we can do, though, is stop retreating from them and hold them to the same standards as everyone else. This means no apologist bullshit when they next kick up a fuss over "blasphemy".
And as Dan Dennett has suggested, we can (at least in the civilized world) try to check their indoctrination of their children.
Does "J" stand for "Jurassic"? Inquiring minds do not wish to know!
J,
You overlook the fact that this discussion was not about Islam until you brought it in @111. Frog@94 and I@109 were arguing with Chris Crawford that we can't afford to shrug our shoulders over the power of irrationalism in the USA, because of the latter's global role. I had not said "a greater force for evil than fundamentalist Islam", in fact I had not even mentioned Islam - because the discussion was centred on the USA. If you wanted to argue against my view that the USA has been a net force for evil in the last few decades, this would also have been quite possible without even mentioning Islam. Obviously you can bring Islam in to any thread you like, but don't expect everyone else to follow your lead. And once you do bring it in, don't expect me to ignore your obvious ignorance of the history of Islam and its fundamentalist variants.
I notice also that you have, evidently, nothing whatever to say about how your anti-Muslim tirades might appear to Muslim women, who in Europe are often suffering multiple oppressions - as women at the hands of Muslim men, as Muslims and members of ethnic minorities at the hands of wider society. That's because you don't give a shit about them, as I said before.
Jackanapes, Jackass, Jackalope, Jarhead...jugular comes to mind in a couple of ways.
Well, I guess I've learned as well as the other commenters here that you are indeed a moron J. If you haven't noticed there isn't a single person here who has raised his hand to defend islam, or to claim that they aren't messed up.
I guess I'm just going to refer you to what NG said above, or my own discussion of FGM, precisely to address our supposed "acceptance" of Islam, so you can settle down and maybe start thinking for a change. Nobody here is an apologist for any religion.
What you're completely ignoring in your happy world is the capacity for destruction of the different parties here.
The difference is, that when it comes to having power, to change things for good or evil, these people don't really have much. If there were a billion-strong armed with weapons anywhere even close to what the american military is armed with, they'd be a threat. They aren't. They blew up 2 buildings and ~4000 people, we destroyed two countries and depending on who's estimate you use 100-500K people. When neoconservatives push the US into a "slightly" evil directions we do more harm then a thousand osama's could ever hope to do with their meager resources.
Simply speaking they don't have the power to destroy western civilization - but we sure as hell do.
Sorry that it isn't fair but we must have rather higher standards for what is a colossal failure on our part then a bunch of cavemen drunk on middle-age religious fanaticism.
J,
I completely agree that there should be no apologistic bullshit if Muslims, or anyone else, complains of blasphemy. Anyone committing or threatening violence on that account should be prosecuted with the full rigour of the law.
There's little that can be done to help them, as religious fundamentalists are impervious to reason.
Crap. You've never even thought about it. Proper funding for women's refuges, the right to remain for women who have left their abusive husbands whatever their immigration status, restoration of cuts in legal aid and translation services, the right of women fleeing fundamentalist oppression in Iraq to settle in the UK. If you want to help in the most immediate way possible, send a donation to Southall Black Sisters.
"And this retreat from science is what you're trying to enable through your "politeness." You don't realize it. But it's what you're doing.
Which makes you as dangerous as them. Being a Quisling through good intentions is still being a Quisling."
No where in any of my two previous posts do I advocate being polite, nor do I say we should ignore ID'ers. Frankly, I think we as scientists should be mad as heck that they are trying to destroy our enterprise.
But I keep bringing up the emotional aspects of this issue because we can't stop them on facts and reason. We have to approach them from their emotional place, let them be heard, and THEN start the debate over our two positions. That isn't being polite or enabling - it is CONFLICT RESOLUTION training 101. You can get angry all you want - confrontational, shouting, stomping out of the meeting - or you can use tried and true techniques to diffuse the situation and make some headway. Fear and ignorance can't be overcome by calling people fearful and ignorant.
Philip H.
Most of politics/activism isn't about conflict resolution - it's about motivating and mobilising those who already agree with you, but aren't doing anything about it, or could be persuaded to do more. That's campaigning 101.
PH: We have to approach them from their emotional place, let them be heard, and THEN start the debate over our two positions. That isn't being polite or enabling - it is CONFLICT RESOLUTION training 101
Who are we trying to approach? The committed ID'ers are ideologically committed -- their minds won't be changed by reason or emotion, since changing their minds requires a "born-again" experience. It's fruitless to focus on creating conversions in the committed. We have to isolate the semi-reasonable from the committed.
Fear and ignorance can't be overcome by calling people fearful and ignorant.
But it can be overcome by pointing out to the vast but not committed populace that the people they are listening to are "fearful and ignorant" -- that they don't want to choose to be on that side, because doing so is declaring themselves to be "fearful and ignorant". It's what they do: they frame the debate so if you don't agree with the theocrats, you must be "against God".
What you miss is that this isn't a conflict resolution campaign, but a conflict-stoking campaign! It's been a mistake for half a century by the tolerant that they should, in principle, tolerate intolerance. This assumes that the opposition is playing by the same rules -- they're not.
We have to convince many moderates that a) rationalism is an important issue; b) that the leaders of irrationalism are irrational, intolerant and dangerous; c) that they, the moderates, have to pick a side. We may lose anyhow -- but we certainly can't win without putting up a fight. There is no compromise available --- our opponents recognize this, why don't we?
frog@205 - thanks! Luckily, the Gandhi quote was just a google away, though I was sure there must be one. Weird person, CC - at a wild guess, I'd hazard (s)he had a parent with a completely uncontrolled temper.
Crap. You've never even thought about it. Proper funding for women's refuges, the right to remain for women who have left their abusive husbands whatever their immigration status, restoration of cuts in legal aid and translation services, the right of women fleeing fundamentalist oppression in Iraq to settle in the UK.
I have thought about it, and it seems quite clear to me that religious fundamentalists like most Muslims are set in their ways and unwilling to be reasoned with. There's little one can do to help them.
The best thing to do is minimize their indoctrination of their children, and take measures to check the spread of Islam in Western Europe (e.g. by cutting down on the number of Muslim immigrants). And, above all, begin calling a spade a spade.
NG:
CC's not so weird -- I don't know enough Brits to compare, but middle-class Americans, particularly of the mid-western Lutheran cultural variety, have a radical aversion to conflict, as compared to Latin Americans, French, Germans, Italians etc. They tend to see any directness, any overt conflict as a prelude to physical violence. "Don't rock the boat" is an almost religious mantra.
I've seen it at workplaces, where technician-class people allowed themselves to be stepped on (to the point of not being paid!) rather than raise their voices; faculty-class folks at non-prestigious universities often will put up with the most ridiculous administrative abuse (what happened to Sumner at Harvard is the exception that proves the point).
I've had it happen to me once when I was working in the mid-west, where I pointed out to a colleague that "some shit wasn't going to fly", and I got back through the grapevine that he thought I was "threatening" him (to put it in perspective, in meat-space I'm no giant).
I'm not sure where it came from --- if it's a cultural trait brought over from some European ethnic group or something that developed here --- but I do see it at the root of many American maladies. It may have come out of European ideas of solidarity that were then stripped of class (in the general sense) --- so you get the "don't disrupt the group" thinking, but with the group purely defined in terms of authority. Or maybe out of the vast intra- and inter-communal violence that marks American history, leading to a realistic assesment that violence is threatening to break out at any moment. Or simple distrust since we lack old, local, cultural cores on which to build our communication systems.
On the other hand, Latin American countries have very similar histories, yet lack this same sense of paranoia and serfdomness. So, I dunno --- maybe it's just Lutherans left to their own devices?
J,
I've given you a list of things that could be done, suggested something you could do yourself, if you were really interested in helping Muslim women escape oppression. You ignore it. As I thought, you're just a bigot.
Patricia @ 217 I could not find any nasty words that begin with J, so I'll have to weakly combine the two mentioned and come up with "Jurassic Jackass".
I checked on the books you mentioned "When Men Become gods", and "When the Drummers Were Women",are available at two local libraries and will check them out. I'm a little leary about the subtitle of the second book: "A Spiritual History Of Rhythm". I read the review of this book and it appears to be a history of female drummers with a religious theme to it, which will put me off, as you know how I feel about religion. Please tell me otherwise.
Holbach, The author is a pagan, however I read the book with the mindset that it is also pretty good history. By the last section she has given a damning picture of the domestication of women. Give it a thumb through at least towars the end. It does have a ton of drumming history, but thats part of her conclusion about male domination of religion.
It's a free look in the library, but if it burns your fingers *grin* let me know & I'll watch my book bragging a bit more carefully.
J: The best thing to do is minimize their indoctrination of their children, and take measures to check the spread of Islam in Western Europe (e.g. by cutting down on the number of Muslim immigrants).
NG: As I thought, you're just a bigot.
But NG, we must stop the untermenschen from outbreeding us! Otherwise we may end up with a mine-shaft gap!
Holbach, do you ever browse the news section of Richard Dawkins web site? There's an article up there now about the Saudi's believing it is OK for 50 year old men to marry 1 year old girls. Pretty soon one won't be able to tell a muslim from a mormon. The whole mob of them is sick.
I've given you a list of things that could be done, suggested something you could do yourself, if you were really interested in helping Muslim women escape oppression. You ignore it. As I thought, you're just a bigot.
Because I'm not enthusiastic about giving a donation to cause X, I don't care about it at all, and I'm therefore a bigot? Good logic.
But NG, we must stop the untermenschen from outbreeding us! Otherwise we may end up with a mine-shaft gap!
Yes, we really don't want the Muslims to take over Western Europe. Nothing bigoted about that.
Nick Gotts,
Actually, I'm not going to lt you get off so lightly. You're making the outrageous claim that I'm a bigot just because I haven't indicated enthusiasm for making a certain donation. Do you realize how crazy a view this really is, or are you too corrupted by your insane ultra-leftist dogma that you can't see?
Dear PZ,
I wish to complain.
J is a tiresome twerp. If he doesn't stop wanking, my head is going to turn blue from pounding it on my desk.
Besides the contributions of Patricia and Holbach, we also have the following "bad" "J" usages:
jizz junky
jello juggler
jerkwad
jerkoff
juicehead
jackslave
joyless
judas
jellyfish
junk mailer
jumentous
jerimiah
jabberwock
OK, I am all out.
Ciao y'all
Slack doesn't win anything on a closer reading.
If he knew anything of cosmology he would know that cosmologists study is the whole bigbang expansion process of the universe. It is fully analogous to abiogenesis vs evolution, as the current concordance cosmology neither predicts nor depends on an initial singularity. (The origin of our Hubble volume could simply be the local end of inflation.) It tries to come as close as possible to the origin, but it may in fact need complementary observations and theory to decide.
Similarly with evolution; it tries to come as close as possible to the origin, but there is no requirement that it does so. In fact it is probable that it will need complementary observations and theory, since todays MET is gene centered, and the first replicating organisms where likely without.
Hmm. I wouldn't read his book.
Patricia @ 228 I will definitely peruse both books at the library since you recommended them and see just how much my adversion is piqued or not.
And @ 230 Yes, I have Richard Dawkins web site as one of my favorites (by the way, do you have THE MIDWEST ATHEISTS as a site? Good stuff there!). I check Richard"s site at least weekly, but have not done so for a while. When you wrote that pretty soon one won't be able to tell a muslim from a, did you mean "moron"? Back to the moron Egnor blog to leave some choice remarks for that creotard!
Me too. The smell of a dead horse, beat into burger has become overwhelming.
You're making the outrageous claim that I'm a bigot just because I haven't indicated enthusiasm for making a certain donation. - J
No, I've called you a bigot because you have repeatedly stressed, in your anti-Muslim tirades, that it is the oppression of Muslim women you object to, yet you show clearly that you have no interest in helping them in any way. I deduce that your alleged concern for them is a complete fraud, and that your views are not being honestly presented here. Added to your ludicrously exaggerated fears about Muslims "taking over western Europe", there really is no other explanation. Bigot.
Nick at #238, nice summation and dead on I think.
Ciao
No, I've called you a bigot because you have repeatedly stressed, in your anti-Muslim tirades, that it is the oppression of Muslim women you object to, yet you show clearly that you have no interest in helping them in any way. I deduce that your alleged concern for them is a complete fraud, and that your views are not being honestly presented here.
With this crazed argument, the few shreds of credibility that you perhaps once had now disintegrate before my very eyes.
Suppose for the sake of argument I agreed that the Southall Black Sisters is the best place for my potential donations. How on Earth does it follow that my current unwillingness to give donations indicate that I don't care about the cause at all? Few people give any non-negligible amount of money to the starving in Africa. Does this mean they're completely indifferent to mass starvation?
Added to your ludicrously exaggerated fears about Muslims "taking over western Europe", there really is no other explanation. Bigot.
If current trends continue, by 2020 about 10% of European nationals will be Muslim. That's not even taking into account the possible incorporation of Turkey into the EU. Given that in the UK Muslims only make up 2.8% of the current population, and still kick up an outrageous amount of trouble, I think it's a pretty scary prospect.
So yes, it's not entirely out of the question that even within my lifetime they can in some meaningful sense "take over" Western Europe. This is not an unreasonable fear.
You're very casually branding me with the word "bigot". One wonders why. I'm not xenophobic, or else I'd be biased against other foreigners than Muslims, which I'm not. I'm not a racist, or I would not focus on one group like Muslims (which are defined by religion anyway). In what sense could you possibly have reason to think I'm a bigot?
Nick Gotts, you are an utter pawn of political correctness. Your opinion is ever dictated by trendy memes prevalent in leftist circles. Learn to think for yourself.
Several days ago, I posted a list of organizations (and a link to one) working on women's rights around the world, especially in Muslim countries. While I did this ostensibly for J, I didn't believe for a second that he would visit any of the web sites or consider supporting any of these groups. If he had gone to these sites, he would have been forced to recognize that a) women's oppression, not only in these countries but around the world, has economic and political as well as religious dimensions and causes, and b) the women involved in these struggles, who have seen the progress they've made over many years destroyed by war and its assorted consequences, do not want to see a "harder line" taken on "Islam" or more self-serving "denunciations" of their religion, much less more military interventions.
It was evident as early as the "True Monsters" thread that the racist-imperialist J's concern for these women is a sham and that he only wishes to use them cynically and instrumentally to promote his political line.
It was evident as early as the "True Monsters" thread that the racist-imperialist J's concern for these women is a sham and that he only wishes to use them cynically and instrumentally to promote his political line.
Arrant fucking bollocks. Obviously to care about something I don't have to be especially enthusiastic about throwing at it money (of which I have little anyway). There are many things in the world equally as terrifying as Islamic oppression of women, and I don't see any compelling reason why I should single out one of them. Nevertheless, I give money to charity when the mood takes me. But this is none of your fucking business in any event.
What a disgustingly low tactic. The analogue would be to post a list of charities devoted to helping rape victims when someone happens to bring up the horrors of rape. And then, if you don't get a response:
"See, he doesn't really mean what he says! He hasn't said anything about the charities I referred to; he doesn't care a jot about rape! The liar, the bigot!"
You're very casually branding me with the word "bigot". One wonders why.
Because you're a bigot, as just about everyone here but you sees clearly. Quite simple, really.
SC at #242, just repeating my comment to Nick, nice summation and dead on I think.
Ciao
Incidentally, apropos your "I can't be a bigot because I only hate Muslims" line, the BNP say much the same, keeping their other hatreds under wraps for reasons of expediency. Not a member by any chance?
You vaguely sense that what I'm saying isn't politically correct. Hence your mind is shut and you disagree with me from the start.
Incidentally, apropos your "I can't be a bigot because I only hate Muslims" line, the BNP say much the same, keeping their other hatreds under wraps for reasons of expediency. Not a member by any chance?
Nope. I detest the BNP. Wondering aloud whether I have "other hatreds" represents totally unsupported speculation on your part.
There are many things in the world equally as terrifying as Islamic oppression of women, and I don't see any compelling reason why I should single out one of them.
So why do you so consistently do so here? As both SC and I have noted, this combination of constantly "protesting" about it while doing nothing to ameliorate it makes absolutely clear that you are interested in Muslim oppression of women only so you can spew your hatred all over this blog.
Nope. I detest the BNP.
Too moderate for you perhaps?
I've long ceased to engage directly with J. Even if I didn't find his views repugnant, which I do, I find him a thoroughly unpleasant person. But I will clarify for others.
What I said when I posted the list was that they would appreciate his (or anyone's) "support." Support needn't be financial, and indeed you can give money to a cause without really understanding it. The most fundamental kind of support is obtaining a basic level of familiarity with the nature and causes, historical and contemporary, of an oppressed group's suffering, and understanding the ways in which they have been fighting for their own rights and the obstacles they face. Seeking out their perspective and working alongside them rather than "on their behalf" helps to prevent our exploiting their suffering for our own ends.
Thanks, JeffreyD! Hope you're safe and well.
So why do you so consistently do so here?
The short answer is, no I don't. To the best of my recollection, I've raised the issue of Islamic impression of women in only two threads, thus devoting to it a grand total of about ten minutes of my time.
You're the activist here. You're the one who's constantly trying to spread anti-American propaganda. I have gone (slightly) out of my way to underscore the evil of Islam when I found you doing this, because the American neoconservatives -- as bad as they are -- have never done anything as terrible as enslave millions of women, like Islam does every day. In spite of this, you and your ilk elect to dedicate so much of your energies to furiously inveighing against the undoubtedly lesser evil. Why?
Too moderate for you perhaps?
I'm less moderate than the BNP for suggesting that Islam is an evil religion, and that having considerably more Muslims in Western Europe is undesirable?
You long ago lost the plot, I'm afraid. You're completely out of your mind.
To the best of my recollection, I've raised the issue of Islamic impression of women...
To clarify: that was supposed to be oppression, not impression.
J,
Maybe because it's a question of efficacity, what can we do, to solve the problems of women in islamic nations, what do you suggest (when there are so few readers from those nations on this very blog for example) and what can we do to solve the problems caused by the influence of religion and neoconservatism in the USA (which btw do have an impact on the first problem also) ?
Negentropyeater,
Yes, but how does "America is evil, America is evil, America is evil" help anything? It doesn't, and it's preaching to the choir on this blog, as practically no-one here condone's US foreign policy. For deep, sinister reasons I can't fathom, he's on a mission to spread anti-American propaganda.
The short answer is, no I don't. To the best of my recollection, I've raised the issue of Islamic impression of women in only two threads, thus devoting to it a grand total of about ten minutes of my time.
Liar. I can specify three easily enough (True Monsters, A smattering..., Gordy slack replies), your contributions on this specific point would have taken a great deal more than ten minutes, and I'm not going to search through all the threads since you've joined
America is evil Point to somewhere anyone has said that, liar.
Boy, this makes me angry - nah, just kidding.
But it did cuase me to look a little deeper into the question of anger.
First, a definition- anger: a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong; wrath; ire.
I think the above debate got wierded not so much because of the emotion anger, but the expression of that anger, and in what manner it is expressed.
It is the belligerence part that CC objects to-
Belligerence defined as: a warlike or aggressively hostile nature, condition, or attitude.
Perhaps it is mans' nature to be belligerent, perhaps it had, or has, evolutionary advantages. I think that the essence of human civilization is to be able to suppress such belligerent behavior, although we seem to be demonstrably poor at doing so.
Can belligerence produce a changed mind, or only a submissive one?
In considering the posts on this thread, both mine and from others, I conclude that I am angry about the stupidity of religious thought and its blind adherents. I am angry about the subjugation of women by such religious adherents. But is belligerence a necessary response?
Regarding an extremist Muslim zealot whose thinking has been poisoned to the degree that he/she feels that anyone not sharing their beliefs is an infidel who must be converted or killed, I would say that belligerence is warranted, and possible a preffered course of action.
Regarding a foolish young earth creationist, or morons like Ray Comfort, I don't think belligerence would be effective. Education must be the key.
Regarding the more zealous Christian Dominionists and Reconstructionists, like Dobson, I'm not sure.
Your thoughts?
Argh! must use preview!
cause, not cuase
preferred, not preffered
My apologies for turdus typos.
Liar. I can specify three easily enough (True Monsters, A smattering..., Gordy slack replies), your contributions on this specific point would have taken a great deal more than ten minutes, and I'm not going to search through all the threads since you've joined.
No, it's not a lie. I sincerely doubt it took me more than a combined total of ten minutes to write those different sentences on Islamic abuse and oppression of women. And no, I really do only remember talking about this in two distinct threads. (A failure of memory, if indeed it is one, isn't the same as a lie.)
Point to somewhere anyone has said that, liar.
Sure. Remember this?
For most of the past few decades, for all the many admirable qualities of its people and culture, the USA has, in global terms, been a force for evil
See, what's happening here is that Nick Gotts is tossing around baseless slander, which others are taking for granted. I'm a bigot -- but he can't explain why. I'm a liar -- but close inspection reveals that I'm not.
Frog @ # 205 and #225:
>It appears that you have the anger problem -- a pathological fear of anger if you can't separate the substance from the rhetoric. A mid-westerner by any chance?
>I ask because my experience has been that American mid-westerners have a very subtle expression of anger and conflict, which can lead them to severely overestimate the anger in folks from outside their cultural group.
Well, does that make Lucas's Jedi transplanted midwesterners? I mean "no, I can't kill someone who is has killed millions and is about to kill all my friends because I WILL TURN TO THE DARK SIDE" is pretty much the kind of attitude that Crawford is advocating.
the USA has, in global terms, been a force for evil is not the same as America is evil, liar.
Still less is for all the many admirable qualities of its people and culture, the USA has, in global terms, been a force for evil the same as America is evil, liar.
When you say a country's people and culture have many admirable qualities, that is quite clearly incompatible with saying that country is evil, liar.
I'm a bigot -- but he can't explain why.
I can't explain why you are a bigot, no. That would require knowing your personal history.
J,
I think the main efficacy of a blog like Pharyngula is to raise consciousness of the issues, through the threads chosen by PZ and the comments. Then, those same commenters can go on and have a multiplying effect.
Nick always, in my opinion, makes very interesting comments. Sometimes there are points where I don't agree with him (I can remember one on his analysis of the risks of an oil-peak crisis where we disagreed, didn't we Nick ?), but I don't interpret his comments at all as "America is evil" nor as "anti-american propaganda", but as constructive criticism of the failed policies of various administrations that have done a very bad job for their own country and the rest of the world.
J, there is something you don't understand. Condemning the failed policies of various American administrations and seeing how bad it has been for their own country, and the rest of the world, is not being "anti-american" or saying "america is evil", as if somehow one would attribute to the whole of the American population the responsibilty of these disastrous effects.
No, it means one wants to try and alert, wake up the American people so that more and more of them become conscient of the fact that they have been mislead, and that they need to react, revolt, and demand the necessary changes that can reverse the disastrous consequences of the failed policies of the past administrations.
Look I was a Child when I first lived in America in the early 70s, I went to school there. When I came back to Europe, everybody was asking me, my parents, how was it, people were so curious, you know for them it was like a model, they had saved us from the war, they were more advanced, a more free society, everything.
Nowaydays, 30 years later, it's the other way round. I'm simplifying of course, but I think you'll agree with me, something fundamnetally wrong has happened over there.
I have a dream, I'd like to see one day both America and Europe working hand in hand together to make this world a better place. It's only a dream, but it can only be achieved if America radically gets rid of its religious delusions at least as much as Europe has done over the past 30 or 40 years.
the USA has, in global terms, been a force for evil is not the same as America is evil, liar.
What a contemptibly dishonest wretch this Nick Gotts character truly is. He is continually painting false pictures, going after strawmen, and flinging unmitigated calumny.
Obviously I did not try to imply that anyone said, "America is evil, America is evil, America is evil". I was obviously referring to a mood, not a specific quotation. I gave an example of something that could with no stretch of imagination be interpreted as of that mood -- and then I'm called a liar on the grounds that the quotation I cited is not exactly the same as "America is evil".
This is a fine example of how Nick Gotts plays. He seizes upon any slender vaguery in my posts and tries to wrest from them the implication that I'm lying. His mind is saturated with ultra-leftist dogma, and he is consquently twisted and deranged.
Nowaydays, 30 years later, it's the other way round. I'm simplifying of course, but I think you'll agree with me, something fundamnetally wrong has happened over there.
No. That is just what people like Nick Gotts like to pretend -- possibly out of national jealousy. The reality of the situation is that America is ahead of Europe in many important areas, such as science, technology and Internet connectivity. Conversely, there are facets of Europe which are better, and I'm sure everyone here knows them well. But Europe is not flat-out "superior", so I get sick of the non-stop America-bashing and Europe-extolling on Pharyngula.
I gave an example of something that could with no stretch of imagination be interpreted as of that mood
Another lie. How can "for all the many admirable qualities of its people and culture, the USA has, in global terms, been a force for evil" be honestly interpreted as "of the mood": "America is evil, America is evil, America is evil"?
Funny that the great majority of the Americans here don't appear to feel I'm calling them evil, or am anti-American. Sure, I'm anti-American-foreign-policy, which has indeed been a force for evil over the past few decades. I'd say the same of British, French, Russian and Chinese foreign policy, to name a few - but none of these states have anything approaching the power of the USA, so the evil effects of their policies are correspondingly less.
Meanwhile J, be careful when you go to bed tonight - there might be a Muslim hiding in the closet!
Nick Gotts like to pretend -- possibly out of national jealousy. - J
You moron. I am entirely without patriotic feeling, and proud of it.
J, parts of Europe have household internet connectivity with Fast Ethernet speeds - 100Mbit both ways and full duplex. That is far in advance of anywhere in the US.
People call you a bigot because you make ludicrous over generalisations, regarding diverse peoples and sets of ideas as homogeneous. Yes, some Muslims use Islam to oppress women, but has been pointed out up thread some Muslims use Islam to fight that oppression. Some Muslims use Islam to justify terrorism, but many use Islam to condemn terrorism. By trying to brand Nick as "anti American" you seem unable to comprehend that others do not generalise.
I also note that you've not commented on the conclusions in "Dying to Win".
Notkieran: Well, does that make Lucas's Jedi transplanted midwesterners? I mean "no, I can't kill someone who is has killed millions and is about to kill all my friends because I WILL TURN TO THE DARK SIDE" is pretty much the kind of attitude that Crawford is advocating.
Well, it is the simple-minded morality that is portrayed in popular media here --- but of course, there is the other side (24, etc.). It's the expression, and not the feeling, that is subtle - it's self-awareness of anger that is missing. When they do express, they really do escalate to violence quickly.
negen: I have a dream, I'd like to see one day both America and Europe working hand in hand together to make this world a better place. It's only a dream, but it can only be achieved if America radically gets rid of its religious delusions at least as much as Europe has done over the past 30 or 40 years.
From the previous, I think there's a deeper disease here than religion -- religion is a result of our national character, and not visa-versa. I'm no sociologist --- but our history seems to show a great deal of self-delusion about who we are, what we are. In a sense, it's a common disease of the New World colonial societies -- US & Latin America --- which involves a need for amnesia. In much of Latin America, no one is descended from Indians and everyone is the child of conquistadors. In the US, everyone is white --- whiter than white --- everyone is a cowboy, especially when they're the exact opposite of a cowboy.
I guess it's the other face of European self-delusions about the nature of their empires. In Mexico, I understand the national mythology is that they are the descendants of Spaniards who raped Indian woman --- and they laud the rapists as great men. Unlike old world colonial societies, we identify with the rapists.
J,
I think if one did a balanced score card on all key indicators you would be surprised. Even in science and technology, I'd say America and Europe are about on par (see in 2007 Nobel prizes in Physics and Chemistry went to German and French researchers), the CERN and the LHC are European projects, in telecommunications, automotive, nuclear, new energies ... Europe is far more competitive. In biotech I don't know exactly. Of course there are many areas where America beats us, like PC software, networking technologies, aeronautics, defense industry,...I've read several benchmark analysis made by the European community, where they go in very deep level of detail (you can find them on the commision's website) and you'll see there are areas where we are weaker, and areas where we are stronger.
But what about all the social issues, healthcare, education, violence, obesity, poverty, freetime, and then energy consumption, ...etc
And then again, look at where was europe 40 years ago compared with the US, and where europe is nowadays compared with the US.
J, parts of Europe have household internet connectivity with Fast Ethernet speeds - 100Mbit both ways and full duplex. That is far in advance of anywhere in the US.
So what? As I correctly stated, America's overall Internet penetration is higher than Europe's. It comes below Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, yet above UK, Germany and France.
Another lie. How can "for all the many admirable qualities of its people and culture, the USA has, in global terms, been a force for evil" be honestly interpreted as "of the mood": "America is evil, America is evil, America is evil"?
Given that the "force for evil" part was your salient point there, I don't think my interpretation was a particularly bold one. At any rate, it's absurd to call me a liar because I draw an interpretation you disagree with.
Now enough of this slander, please. I don't like you, you don't like me. Let's put this one to bed.
I think if one did a balanced score card on all key indicators you would be surprised. Even in science and technology, I'd say America and Europe are about on par (see in 2007 Nobel prizes in Physics and Chemistry went to German and French researchers), the CERN and the LHC are European projects, in telecommunications, automotive, nuclear, new energies ... Europe is far more competitive.
I'm sick of people going on about Nobel prizes, as if they're the best metric of national achievement in science. They're not. Percentage of research papers and impact factor might well be more informative statistics. Both on which the US winds up well ahead. I want to get away from this thread and I can't be bothered going into detail now, but I think the general consensus is that America continues to be more scientifically innovative and productive than the whole of Europe.
You can't get out of this one: the United States undoubtedly has many good qualities. The relentless America-bashing on Pharygnula is obscene, especially when it comes from people who live a constitutional monarchy in which the Queen is Head of State. (See? Europe-bashing is easily done too.)
The relentless America-bashing on Pharygnula is obscene, especially when it comes from people who live a constitutional monarchy in which the Queen is Head of State. (See? Europe-bashing is easily done too.)
"Obscene"? You don't know the meaning of the word.
"a constitutional monarchy in which the Queen is Head of State." You call that Europe-bashing? A simple statement of fact? In any case, what on Earth makes you think that someone's nationality is relevant in judging the merit of what they say?
a) You are over generalising. Again. Both Europe and the US are diverse.
b) There are other metrics that could be used to measure technological advancement even with respect to the Internet. Average bandwidth perhaps? Average cost of a given bandwidth, for several bandwidths?
Damn I go away for a while and J has managed to degenerate the discussion even more.
If you cannot see all the stupid failures in America, both in domestic, and especially in foreign policy, especially over the last 8 years (but really from before as well), you need to look again. 80% or so of Americans recognize this, and denying it isn't going to help at all. Our recent foreign policy has been idiotic, counter-productive, and the only reason you might not call it evil is if you believe that the people "leading" this nation are too stupid and naive to be properly evil. Not that that is any excuse.
If I'm not mistaken this is the country where we believe that the essence of patriotism is to openly criticize the failures of your own government. Unfortunately that notion seems to be just an empty sentiment recently but I think it's finally changing. Whining about "america-bashing" instead of recognizing what our problems are and how we fix them is part of the problem.
And yes, technically J you're right that we are still leading in science, at least in terms of physical science (being a physicist I can't really comment on bio stuff although it seems the US is still fine there too, despite the anti-stem cell idiocy). The reason for that isn't that we've been doing well, because we haven't, but that most of the rest of the world is mired in their own issues, including Europe. Hell for many reasons I'd love to go back to western Europe, and I probably would have if various friends of mine who live there hadn't painted a rather bleaker picture then what one might think, living in the US.
Nevertheless, while it's still not quite so bad that I'd prefer doing science in Europe, things are changing for the worse, and if we keep going this way it'll get to that (funding for example is done in a far more sane manner in France). If I was born in western europe I'd most likely prefer to stay there then come to the US, but being eastern european I know I'd have to deal with far more shit in western europe then in the US (and it would be even worse probably if I was indian, far-east asian or god forbid muslim).
With regards anger not being a good thing.
How the fuck are we supposed to respond when we see a despotic dictator using violence to prevent himself from loosing an election ? How else are we supposed to respond when we see the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth condone torture ? How else are we supposed to respond when a woman gets killed by her father for having a crush on a soldier and the authorities congratulate the father before letting him go ? How are we supposed to respond when our governments lie and mislead us over the evidence that leads to war ?
If people do not get angry at these things then there is no hope for us. We might as well forget about trying to make the world a better place.
Coriolis,
J is actually a useful example of the European analogue to the American insanity I was describing. Just as the US and Latin America have separate but related insanities about our national identities which seep into everything, Europe has one too: it's inability to recognize that the "West" and the Islamic worlds are one civilization, siblings derived from the Roman empire that have been inextricably linked since the Punic wars.
So for Europe, Jews and Muslims "represent" elements of their own civilization that they want to project off (and visa-versa, mind you). It's a psychosis, and has led to horrendous results, as these elements act in reaction to each other. The US and Latin America, on the other hand, are constantly in an internal struggle over our "Europeanness", our "whiteness", which is a distinct disease.
"Obscene"? You don't know the meaning of the word.
"a constitutional monarchy in which the Queen is Head of State." You call that Europe-bashing? A simple statement of fact? In any case, what on Earth makes you think that someone's nationality is relevant in judging the merit of what they say?
In the first place, constitutional monarchies are laughably old-fashioned in this modern age, and they readily allow for government abuse. The ceremonial role of the monarch is entirely unnecessary, and moreover puts emphasis on all the wrong values (hereditary, patriotism, traditionalism). Personally, I'd much rather have a modern constitution drawn up from scratch by highly intelligent men.
Second, it seems a bit unnatural for a Brit relentless call America for everything, while not admitting any of the manifest flaws of his own country. At the very least it's impolite, and makes me ashamed to be a European. I've known more than one American to come here expecting Western Europe to be some kind of paradise in light of Europeans' diehard raving against America. When they come here and find out that we have myriad huge problems of our own, a positively anti-European mentality can develop.
Neither place is superior. The US is better than Europe in some respects, Europe is better than the US in some other respects. Continually harping on about the bad qualities of one is unfair and potentially damaging of Euro-American relations.
How the fuck are we supposed to respond when we see a despotic dictator using violence to prevent himself from losing an election ?
Not ~quite~ the same leader you are referring to, but if you really want to get riled up, check out the arguments for "Bush Derangement Syndrome" posted up on the "Dr. Sanity" website:
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2004/11/psychology-of-bush-hatred.html
displacement????
ROFLMAO
I rather think these morons should look up the definition of "denial" on their own site!
In any case, what on Earth makes you think that someone's nationality is relevant in judging the merit of what they say?
J's forte is the logical fallacy of "poisoning the well".
You have to take that into account if you wish to engage him.
and they readily allow for government abuse
as opposed to dictatorships.
J, as usual, pontificating from his ass.
J is actually a useful example of the European analogue to the American insanity I was describing.
It's not insanity, just over-assurance based on very little real information and much ignorance.
Yes, that is not a uniquely American phenomenon, regardless of how common it is here.
I'd say it's a common way of dealing with insecurity, that can become almost unconscious in application.
Just as the US and Latin America have separate but related insanities about our national identities which seep into everything, Europe has one too: it's inability to recognize that the "West" and the Islamic worlds are one civilization, siblings derived from the Roman empire that have been inextricably linked since the Punic wars.
I don't give an infinitesimal shit about this irrelevant historical wanking. The Islamic world is undeniably massively different from the current civilized West. To call me "insane" for not openly recognizing this dubious concept is, well...insane.
You are over generalising. Again. Both Europe and the US are diverse.
How could I possibly be over-generalizing when I specifically said I was talking in "overall" terms? America's overall Internet penetration (percentage of population with direct access to the Internet) has always been greater than Europe's. The disparity in Internet penetration used to be significant, but now things are levelling off.
The vast bulk of the innovation necessary for the Internet and modern software came from the US, by the way. The US is obviously better in some areas than Europe. I don't know why you're finding this so hard to accept. The statistic I cited is accurate, and it gives an example of a way in which the US is superior to Europe. Let it go.
80% or so of Americans recognize this
I'm not sure one can actually conclude much about the true level of recognition of the actual foibles of the current administration from poll data, but it does at least indicate a huge level of dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs.
If I'm not mistaken this is the country where we believe that the essence of patriotism is to openly criticize the failures of your own government.
"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
-- James A. Baldwin
"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else."
-- Clarence Seward Darrow
How could I possibly be over-generalizing when I specifically said I was talking in "overall" terms?
you just redefined over-generalization.
congratulations, moron.
the point was, however you choose to phrase it, you can't look at the issues you are addressing in "over-generalized" or "overall" or "overarching" or "overreaching" or "extraploated" terms.
er, just so you don't try to re-define the same thing yet again.
Let it go.
go away.
the point was, however you choose to phrase it, you can't look at the issues you are addressing in "over-generalized" or "overall" or "overarching" or "overreaching" or "extraploated" terms.
Well it's a stupid point.
If you look at country-by-country Internet penetration, you'll see that the US beats UK, France and Germany, and finishes well above the European average. America is clearly advanced in this way relative to most of Europe (even Western Europe).
He's patently right.
Just because you admit to generalising doesn't mean that generalisation is valid. Different European nations have different telecoms policies, and telecoms industry set ups. Lumping them together is pointless, but congratulations on briefly comparing the US to distinct European states.
For deep, sinister reasons I can't fathom, he's on a mission to spread anti-American propaganda.
What anti-American propaganda, exactly? And does your notion of propaganda encompass true claims or only false ones?
Just because you admit to generalising doesn't mean that generalisation is valid.
A false generalization is not the same as an "over-generalization". An over-generalization is a statement like Gordy Slack's that people disbelieve in evolution because of "the arrogant zealotry of cocksure ideologues" -- it's a statement that may apply to some individuals but cannot logically be extended to a group. But statements about the comparative internet reach in different regions are either true or false.
"For most of the past few decades, for all the many admirable qualities of its people and culture, the USA has, in global terms, been a force for evil: for injustice, environmental destruction, and the spread of religious extremism."
Do not advance your subjective opinion as if it's the Undisputable Truth.
How would you distinguish between opinions that are being advanced as though they were the Undisputable Truth and those that are not?
Many people think Islamic fundamentalism was and continues to be a far graver evil than American neoconservatism.
For that to be a relevant response, you would have to hold that there can only be one force for evil.
All obfuscationist bullshit. The Islamists would obviously still be oppressing women even if it weren't for the US and Britain.
Only if they were in power. I have to agree with Nick about your historical and political ignorance.
Actually, female genital mutilation is fairly widespread among Muslims even in Western Europe.
So are many practices -- watching TV, putting on one's left shoe before one's right, etc. For understanding, one must go beyond such associations (unless one's goal is solely to spread anti-Muslim propaganda):
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/jc.htm
Just because you admit to generalising doesn't mean that generalisation is valid. Different European nations have different telecoms policies, and telecoms industry set ups. Lumping them together is pointless, but congratulations on briefly comparing the US to distinct European states.
You're just trying to confuse things. America's Internet penetration is higher than that of most European countries, including UK, France and Germany. This is an example of an area in which the US is doing well. End of story.
Thanks for providing a simple example of the underhanded tactics that are being used against me.
For that to be a relevant response, you would have to hold that there can only be one force for evil.
Not so. The issue isn't that Nick Gotts has excoriated the neocons. I do it myself. What I dislike is that he seemingly lays into them at every available opportunity. This paints the picture that the neocons rather than the Islamic fundamentalists are the principal bad guys. And on Pharygnula he's preaching to the choir. Surely on this blog it would be more productive to direct one's energies to attacking Islam.
Also, describing the USA as a "force for evil" is very misleading. How could he possibly know that America's net influence on the world has been negative? Why doesn't he focus his criticism specifically on the US government's foreign policy instead of the whole country? He truly does seem to have an anti-American bee in his bonnet.
And please, stop acting as if use of the term "anti-American" makes me a right-winger. I'm intending it to refer to an extreme, bigoted, irrational hatred of the United States. I'm not using it in the Republicans' preposterously broad sense.
Only if they were in power. I have to agree with Nick about your historical and political ignorance.
It takes a stupendous leap of blind faith to believe that no Islamists would be currently be in power anywhere in the world if it weren't for Britain and the United States.
As I said above, isn't it an incredible coincidence that whenever a political vacuum is created by Western intervention, there's always a party of raving fanatics sufficiently powerful to step in and fill it?
Not so.
Well, yes, so.
And please, stop acting as if use of the term "anti-American" makes me a right-winger. I'm intending it to refer to an extreme, bigoted, irrational hatred of the United States.
Sorry, but I'm an American, highly critical of U.S. policy, who recognizes the multi-layered irrationality and general stupidity of that characterization of such critics.
It takes a stupendous leap of blind faith to believe that no Islamists would be currently be in power anywhere in the world if it weren't for Britain and the United States.
That silly strawman further establishes your complete failure of understanding of history, politics, and rationality.
Perhaps J could demonstrate that he isn't a complete ignoramus by detailing the history of some Islamist regime that U.S. foreign policy was not instrumental in bringing to power.
As I said above, isn't it an incredible coincidence that whenever a political vacuum is created by Western intervention, there's always a party of raving fanatics sufficiently powerful to step in and fill it?
What we are to infer from it not being a incredible coincidence (J seems to be quite fond of moronic strawmen don't even further his argument) is not clear.
What I dislike is that he seemingly lays into them at every available opportunity. This paints the picture that the neocons rather than the Islamic fundamentalists are the principal bad guys. And on Pharygnula he's preaching to the choir. Surely on this blog it would be more productive to direct one's energies to attacking Islam.
J is like one of those wacky Clinton supporters who claim that Obama was given a free pass by the media, that there was lots of sexism but no racism, etc. They see only what they want to see.
Also, I'm at a loss as to why anyone should give a damn what J dislikes about Nick Gotts. I just encountered the guy for the first time and I have my own dislikes, but I can't imagine that anyone else cares.
Good grief. This guy's indefatigable. OK, it's time for me to drop out of this pointless exchange.
Don't pay any attention to his ridiculous, intellectually-challenged assertions.
I don't even have [an axe to grind]
Ho, that's funny. "it would be more productive to direct one's energies to attacking Islam" -- no axe grinding there. Because, damn, there just isn't enough criticism of Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. And commenting on "the degree to which the USA has armed and supported the Saudi wahhabis (and particularly the close ties between the ibn Saud and Bush dynasties), cooperated with the Afghan jihadis and the Pakistani ISI (which is deeply infiltrated by extreme jihadi elements)" is "all obfuscational bullshit" because ... it doesn't grind your own axe.
Ichthyic: "J's forte is the logical fallacy of "poisoning the well".
J: "Don't pay any attention to his ridiculous, intellectually-challenged assertions."
Ayup. Sorry, you stupid fucking piece of shit, but you can't win an argument that way.
J,
What's the purpose of accusing people of being anti-American bigots? Really. Enquiring minds want to know. You're inordinately fond of it.
I'm sure it's not your intention, but as often as you say something balanced and reasonable in your clarifications, you come across as a paranoid who sees anti-Americanism in everything that doesn't obsequiously flatter the US. It has the appearance of sycophancy.
If I were American, which I'm not, I think I'd be rather uncomfortable with the warm sloppy wetness squirming between my buttocks as your tongue slithers toward my sphincter, and more than a little pissed off at your hair-trigger reaction, "defending" me with ostentatious nobility like I'm a pusillanimous little sissy too meek and stupid to do it for myself.
This paints the picture that the neocons rather than the Islamic fundamentalists are the principal bad guys.
You are like a bad referee, who, when a fight starts on the playing field, only penalizes the last person you saw throw a punch.
I think Nick recalls the effects of neocon policies better than you do. If you actually spend some time looking into the history of neocon policies and their effects in the Middle East over the last 30 years, you might start to see how the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is at least partly related.
Many of the neocon policies (starting with Reagan and going from there), are involved with the rise of violent Islamic fundamentalism. From the Shah of Iran, to the support of radical Israeli "housing projects" in the Gaza strip, to actually building military bases and having a military presence in Saudi Arabia, it gets harder and harder to separate "source" from "reaction".
Not that the neocons were the only ones around that were pissing off Muslims. I do also recall a rather nasty attempt at putting Afghanistan under the thumb by the former Soviet Union.
but even then, looking at WHY the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, one can make the case that it can partly be attributed to a reaction to neocon policies (though the Soviets had many other reasons, and it was a long, ongoing conflict between the UK and Russia, going back to the previous century.
There's little doubt in my mind that if the neocons had never garnered power to begin with, much death and suffering could have been avoided, and everybody (except those interested in oil and stock speculation) would be better off.
but why am I telling you, J?
you should already know all this stuff if you want to understand why so many of us abhor neocons.
Is it even possible you could stop talking out of your ass once in a while, and actually do some research, or read a book or two, BEFORE pontificating?
It really is interesting stuff, and well worth your time to learn about.
I would suggest starting with the divisions created in the Middle East during and just after WWII; the influence of the British and other Western Powers in changing the very borders of the countries involved there.
Then, jump on to looking at the Islamic Revolution in '78, and what the causes of that were, and go on from there.
(starting with before Reagan and going from there)
J never did answer my questions in #292:
What anti-American propaganda, exactly? And does your notion of propaganda encompass true claims or only false ones?
I guess he got fatigued.
I'll simply ignore this Truth Machine lunatic.
Is it even possible you could stop talking out of your ass once in a while, and actually do some research, or read a book or two, BEFORE pontificating?
Sorry, I wasn't aware that the only possible conclusion for an informed person is that American neoconservativism is a greater evil than Islamic fundamentalism. And obviously, the main things wrong about the Islamic world have nothing to do with religion and are an unmistakable direct consequence of Western or Soviet imperialism. Please forgive my ignorance.
I'll simply ignore this Truth Machine lunatic.
I'll simply ignore J -- by pointing out what a cowardly and dishonest piece of shit he is.
Sorry, I wasn't aware that the only possible conclusion for an informed person is that American neoconservativism is a greater evil than Islamic fundamentalism.
well that would be true, and you could make a counter argument, if, in fact, you WERE an informed person.
Please forgive my ignorance.
frankly, in a discussion of this nature, it's entirely inexcusable. Moreso the fact that you don't realize that religion is a tool of the Islamic revolution, and not the primary driving force behind it.
which, of course, is why I suggested you actually go read something comprehensive about the Islamic Revolution before continuing.
oh well, best laid plans.
If you wish to continue being an ignorant ass, you at least have to expect us to continue treating you like a twit.
btw, you can ignore TM all you want, while he continuously strips the flesh from you.
He enjoys it.
"Is it even possible you could stop talking out of your ass once in a while, and actually do some research, or read a book or two, BEFORE pontificating?"
Sorry, I wasn't aware that the only possible conclusion for an informed person is that American neoconservativism is a greater evil than Islamic fundamentalism.
Can anyone explain to me how J's statement is connected to Icthyic's?
you can ignore TM all you want
As his comments show, he can't, actually. But it really doesn't matter; the merit of my comments is independent of him.
He enjoys it.
Whee!
the main things wrong about the Islamic world
are you really suggesting THIS is your source for understanding middle east politics for the last 50 years?
sorry, but I just gotta bust a laugh at that one.
Turning the issue to another place, I suppose you think it was really the evangelical xians in the US that drove the rise of neocon policy, instead of the neocons carefully cultivating the credulous to use as a voting block?
man, I do hope most of your peers are better educated than yourself.
And obviously, the main things wrong about the Islamic world have nothing to do with religion and are an unmistakable direct consequence of Western or Soviet imperialism. Please forgive my ignorance.
When you see someone here defend Sharia law, do let us know.
Your ignorance seems to include a complete failure to understand that strawman arguments are fallacious.
For a clue: read Marge Piercy's "A Handmaid's Tale". It's not enough to point out how nasty Abrahamic religious law is -- one must attend to how it becomes operative.
Can anyone explain to me how J's statement is connected to Icthyic's?
I did my best to interpret what he was actually trying to respond to, but my first reaction was exactly the same as yours.
Whatever.
when someone gives their source for understanding the entire history of the middle east in the form of a Letterman "Top-Ten List" of why Islam is a bad religion, I really don't see the point of continuing.
It becomes rather like trying to argue the history of quantum mechanics with my dog; pointless without a similar frame of reference.
Hell, I can't even get J to jump through some basic hoops.
at least he can bark, but it's one of those "little dog" barks, and it just becomes irritating.
I don't even have [an axe to grind]
I haven't paid much attention to this guy ... does he ever discuss anything other than the threat of Islam?
I haven't paid much attention to this guy
nuff said.
Ah, you're being too ambitious: try "heel", "beg", and not pooping on the carpet first.
Emmet,
We have our differences, but I don't think you're a bad guy, despite what I said when in bad temper. I'm pleased you aren't (yet) joining the others in pretending that my arguments are without question absolutely 100% wildly beyond all reason. Hilariously, they're playing "Stop that crow!" without realizing what they're doing.
What's the purpose of accusing people of being anti-American bigots? Really. Enquiring minds want to know. You're inordinately fond of it.
I've already explained. On Pharygnula they almost without fail clutch with white fists onto America's nuts. I find such ball-clutching distasteful. Not only is it misleading (as it diverts attention away from the huge problems in other parts of the world); it leads to biased judgement as well.
For example, they're always going hysterical about those Young Earth Creationism statistics. You know what I mean: "66% of Americans believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old." That sort of thing. Well they seldom entertain the thought that maybe these statistics are very superficial. Maybe this isn't down to poor science education (relative to other nations), but instead the sheer popularity of creationist views. Maybe Europeans aren't really any better educated about evolution or science, but merely happen to live in countries in which creationism isn't fashionable. (And fashion is a fickle thing.) This seems to me a plausible hypothesis, yet nobody around here ever considers it due to the bitter anti-American climate.
If I were American, which I'm not, I think I'd be rather uncomfortable with the warm sloppy wetness squirming between my buttocks as your tongue slithers toward my sphincter, and more than a little pissed off at your hair-trigger reaction, "defending" me with ostentatious nobility like I'm a pusillanimous little sissy too meek and stupid to do it for myself.
Yuck, what kind of gruesome imagery is that?
Right, I'll tell you what I think about this one. I have a number of aims in so often coming to America's defense. Firstly, for the foregoing reasons I believe the anti-American climate in leftist circles is undesirable. Second, I like to show Americans that not all Europeans are of the snobby, looking-down-one's-nose variety. I try to demonstrate that we do not all stereotype Americans as stupid, fat, gun-totting evangelical rednecks. (Regrettably, and to my great embarrassment, that's exactly what many of my fellow countrypeople do.)
Finally, I should disavow these amusing allegations of sycophantism. You should not confuse defense with eulogy. If anyone are sychophants it's the Americans posting here, as is exhibited by the hostile reactions yielded whenever I suggest that America might possibly be better than Europe in some ways.
Ah, you're being too ambitious: try "heel", "beg", and not pooping on the carpet first.
A gratuitous attack, to which I oughtn't deign to respond.
when someone gives their source for understanding the entire history of the middle east in the form of a Letterman "Top-Ten List" of why Islam is a bad religion
An alarming feature of this view is that it seems to provide no path to improvement short of genocide. And that essentialist animus is readily harnessed for political ends -- like rallying support for the invasion of Iraq.
pretending that my arguments are without question absolutely 100% wildly beyond all reason.
The pretense is all yours ... as with that very statement, or when Ichthyic writes If you actually spend some time looking into the history of neocon policies and their effects in the Middle East over the last 30 years, you might start to see how the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is at least partly related and you respond with your absurd (but not 100%) distortion Sorry, I wasn't aware that the only possible conclusion for an informed person is that American neoconservativism is a greater evil than Islamic fundamentalism.
As for "without question absolutely 100% wildly beyond all reason", we have your own "All obfuscationist bullshit".
See, it really doesn't matter whether it's "100%"; what matters is that you are fundamentally dishonest person.
I haven't paid much attention to this guy ... does he ever discuss anything other than the threat of Islam? - truth machine
Yes, IIRC he spent his first few score messages on the blog (that I saw) arguing that atheists ought to seriously consider calling themselves "Brights". Long after everyone else was utterly sick of it.
For example, they're always going hysterical about those Young Earth Creationism statistics. You know what I mean: "66% of Americans believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old." That sort of thing. Well they seldom entertain the thought that maybe these statistics are very superficial. Maybe this isn't down to poor science education (relative to other nations), but instead the sheer popularity of creationist views. Maybe Europeans aren't really any better educated about evolution or science, but merely happen to live in countries in which creationism isn't fashionable. (And fashion is a fickle thing.) This seems to me a plausible hypothesis, yet nobody around here ever considers it due to the bitter anti-American climate.
Wow. Anyone inclined to take J at all seriously should read that over a few times.
my arguments are without question absolutely 100% wildly beyond all reason
Actually, as applied to his statement I quoted above, I think that's an accurate characterization.
Well he talks a lot about it, but I wouldn't use the verb "discuss", he still hasn't managed to elaborate his opinion in a way which is worthwhile of a constructive discussion.
Sometimes he says things which could be of interest but he has this bad habit of drowning them with other blanket statements and the exchange immediately goes bezerk.
But J, nobody pretends that the US isn't better than Europe in some ways. Clearly it is. But when you say some population is better than some other population, you have to be pretty specific about your metric of goodness and what it applies to.
In defending America (something they're quite capable of doing for themselves, btw) you do have a habit of making sweeping generalisations that denigrate somewhere else. You don't seem to consider the collateral damage. When that somewhere else happens to be where you're from, it makes you seem like a lick-arse with an inferiority complex.
Truth be told, a great many of the world's problems are the result of fuck-ups by European colonial powers, the UK probably being the worst, and, more recently, US foreign policy. I'm a European and pretty left-wing. In some respects, I'm a snobby European who looks down my nose at the US. I think they've got a few things badly wrong. In other respects, I'm in awe of their achievement. I think they've got a few things right.
But, truth is that good news doesn't sell. Nobody wants to hear about how marvelous NASA or Stanford are, the same way as nobody wants to hear how many people had a great day yesterday. We want to hear how many people were hit by buses because that's what's extraordinary. I'd hate to see the day when we stop bitching about what's wrong in the most powerful (militarily and economically) country on earth because it's become ordinary. That I would find truly worrying. Indeed, that's part of what I do find worrying.
And, right now, I'm more scared of the Republicans than I am of Al-Qa'eda. I'm more scared of the Fundagelical Taliban than any group of Muslims, real or imagined. Yes, I find some polls about Muslim attitudes in the UK very frightening, but really, you should check out Scott Atran on Muslim radicalisation in Europe. He paints a far less scary picture, he's the guy who's done the research, and it's pretty well in line with my own experience of immigrant Muslims here: largely secular and about as extreme as Anglicans.
No, a humourous play on dogs jumping through hoops. Mild ribbing at worst. Not everything is an attack.
For a clue: read Marge Piercy's "A Handmaid's Tale".
Margaret Atwood is the author.
Sometimes he says things which could be of interest but he has this bad habit of drowning them with other blanket statements and the exchange immediately goes bezerk.
Yes, that's exactly what happens, and I'll tell you why:
They dimly sense that what I'm saying is politically incorrect, so they go through my posts with a fine comb and a magnifying glass looking for some isolated broad statement or minor ambiguity, which they hope to blow thoroughly out of proportion. They get hysterical not because my posts are outrageous, but because they just don't like what I have to say.
As for why they're afflicted with such prejudice, I think it has something to do with my unsubtly railing against a group which happens to be primarily brown-skinned. This is vaguely redolent of racism, so they don't like it at all. I would find this simple-mindedness funny if they didn't mask their childish bias in that obnoxious self-righteous tone.
Margaret Atwood is the author.
Oops; sorry. Thanks.
#330: downright psychotic.
Nobody wants to hear about how marvelous NASA or Stanford are
A sweeping over-generalization if ever there was one. Here, which is the context, we hear quite a bit of that, and people want to. And people elsewhere want to hear good news, and frequently say so.
We want to hear how many people were hit by buses because that's what's extraordinary.
Not really. That's what we are fed by the corporate media because it catches people's attention and is part of an illusion that that is "news", as opposed to those things that actually affect people's lives and that they could act on. And even in the context of the corporate media, "good news" stories get tremendous attention and ratings. Certainly it helps to be extraordinary, but stories of lives saved, bravery, selfless love, etc. are at least as appealing as bus crashes. Beyond that, more and more people are going on-line for news and information, and they aren't seeking bus crashes -- that is not what they want.
you can ignore TM all you want, while he continuously strips the flesh from you.
Hmmm ...
Tell that to Nick Gotts. He's more obsessive in grinding his axe than I am in grinding mine. (In fact, I don't even have one. I'm merely opposing unreasonableness when I think I see it.)
...
my unsubtly railing against a group which happens to be primarily brown-skinned
Riiiipppp ...
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/we_happy_hooligans.php
In defending America (something they're quite capable of doing for themselves, btw) you do have a habit of making sweeping generalisations that denigrate somewhere else. You don't seem to consider the collateral damage. When that somewhere else happens to be where you're from, it makes you seem like a lick-arse with an inferiority complex.
The people with the inferiority complex are the Europeans who feel the need to preach to the choir about neoconservativism or creationism or Iraq or health care, at every single fucking available opportunity. I'd imagine national jealousy plays a crucial role in motivating such behaviour.
I prefer neither the US or UK, at least at the moment. They each have their upsides and downsides. And I hardly see how denigrating my country a little makes me a "lick-arse".
Truth be told, a great many of the world's problems are the result of fuck-ups by European colonial powers, the UK probably being the worst, and, more recently, US foreign policy.
OK, but leftists often forget that good undoubtedly came out of European colonialism as well as bad. I wouldn't care to speculate how the balance sheet looks.
Nobody wants to hear about how marvelous NASA or Stanford are, the same way as nobody wants to hear how many people had a great day yesterday. We want to hear how many people were hit by buses because that's what's extraordinary. I'd hate to see the day when we stop bitching about what's wrong in the most powerful (militarily and economically) country on earth because it's become ordinary. That I would find truly worrying. Indeed, that's part of what I do find worrying.
Oh, I wouldn't encourage anyone to altogether stop bitching. That would never do. However, I'd also like to see bitching concerning what's wrong with Europe, for a change. Why has it always got to be about the flaws of America? Why not the flaws of Europe and the rest of the world?
And, right now, I'm more scared of the Republicans than I am of Al-Qa'eda. I'm more scared of the Fundagelical Taliban than any group of Muslims, real or imagined. Yes, I find some polls about Muslim attitudes in the UK very frightening, but really, you should check out Scott Atran on Muslim radicalisation in Europe.
I think Scott Atran embarrassed himself in his battle with Sam Harris over Edge. If those mad posts of his are exemplary of his research, I really have no truck whatever with it.
I'm too more scared of the Republicans than Al Qaeda. So what? Islam -- to just name one thing -- results in essentially the enslavement of millions of women. The Republicans have never done anything like that. It's plain which is the greater evil out of Islam and neoconservativism.
My experience of Muslim immigrants doesn't agree at all with yours, I'm afraid. Calling the ones I've met "creationists" or "homophobes" would be flattering to them.
And yet again J, if you want to bring up all the issues related to islamic fundamentalism, analyse the causes, the risks, whether within western Europe, or in the Arab world, or elsewhere, no problem, please do so, but do it equitably, and go in the full understanding of how the different parties involved influence each other, that's what we would appreciate.
Islamic fundamentalism is of course a real and serious issue. Nobody in his sane mind would ever be able to ignore it. But it's all the more important to analyse what nourishes it, and to evaluate it's real risks, and to do so on a per country basis, because it varies a lot.
This is also an issue where we diverge slightly with Americans. Within America, Christian fundamentalism is way more problematic, whereas within Western Europe, we have done much more to get rid of this lunacy, and therefore, not only being much closer to the arab world and the maghreb, but also having a much higher immigrant population from these countries, are we probably more sensitive to the day to day problems at home of islamic fundamentalism than Americans. But what are the causes at home ? Poverty, racism, failed policies of cultural cross fertilization, and of course the same ones we find in America with religious endoctrination of children, it's absolutely clear that in Western Europe, having all these years attempted to reduce the influence of Christian Fundamentalism and its political arm facism, we don't particularly relish on the idea to see Islamic fundamentalism take its root. I think it's clear in our politicians minds that they'd rather have 2nd or 3rd generation maghrebis or turks or Pakistanis who are non religious, than fundamentalist muslims within the European Community. It is true afterall that religious fundamentalism, whether it's Islamic or Christian is a very stupid idea when you are trying to build a community of diverse people.
But please, also, avoid to systematically attempt to do so as a defense of this specious argument, "the republicans can't be that bad, look at islamic fundamentalism". It makes no sense.
- J, historical scholar, 5-12-08
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/we_happy_hooligans.php
Thanks, sort of; that was illuminating ... like shining a flashlight into a pit toilet ... revealing more of the sort of psychopathology seen in #330.
J,
And here you go again...
It's stronger than you, you just can't resist.
Within America, Christian fundamentalism is way more problematic, whereas within Western Europe, we have done much more to get rid of this lunacy
See #325. J seems to think it's just a matter of fashion -- "maybe". And if you think otherwise, that's "due to the bitter anti-American climate". J knows a whole lot about people's motives -- why they call themselves atheists, why they talk about cosmology, etc.
Emmet,
After a bit of consideration, I've changed my mind. I was arguing basically the same thing in two other threads. It's an absurd waste of time for me to resume my campaign of confronting "America-haters". The valid points I make will be drowned out in the hysteria anyway.
That's because it has fuck all to do with foreign policy and the other contexts in which you bring it up. Illustration:
"You talk a lot about Islam's oppression of women, but you fail to point out that Saudi Arabia is ahead of the US in access to free health care and education. And camel breeding."
You do realise that you are comparing a millenary religion practiced by close to a billion people and a 40 yold political doctrine maintained by a few hundred people ?
It doesn't seem to you like comparing apples and oranges ?
J,
my comment #343 was refering to your comparison of "evils" between islam and neoconservatism.
Anthing that you wish to say...
But how evil were all those roads, railways, telegraph lines, farms, sewage systems, modern technology, police service, etc.! Verily, European colonialism was undeniably a relentless and systematic force for the direst evil. - J
Well, J has a point here - after all, Japan, which never benefited from European colonialism, proved quite unable to develop any of these things without it - which is why it is now the poorest and most unhealthy country in the world.
TM @#332,
Points well taken. Now here, "which is the context", are the long threads the "car crash" threads about politics and religious lunacy or the "nice" threads about developments in science?
J @#335,
Gimme a break. The only thing I can think of off the top-of-my-head that I'm jealous of in the US is the lower prices for computer hardware. In theory, most American values and the Constitution are fantastic (guaranteed freedom of speech, separation of church and state, etc.) but in practice it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference (I've never felt my speech legally constrained and the church has less influence on politics, for example). With recent developments, their civil rights appear to actually have less protection than here although the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU is a complete joke.
But doing it "at every single fucking available opportunity"?
Such as?
And you'll find plenty of it on European political blogs. If you want to talk about the Lisbon Treaty, you're in the wrong place.
On Islamic radicalisation in Europe or religion generally? I don't agree with Atran on the more metaphysical things, and I like the way Sam Harris expresses his position on religion generally, but on Islamism, Harris does speak in idealogical terms with little or no grounding in empirical evidence and Atran is the one with the data. Now, you get to have your own opinion, but you don't get to have your own facts. I don't know a whole lot about it one way or another, but I'm more inclined to take seriously the guy who's actually studied it over the guy who hasn't.
I'm glad you think so. And so what? If one's a greater evil than the other, does that mean we do nothing about the lesser evil? In this case, your lesser evil has greatly more capacity to do harm and is greatly more amenable to amelioration (by electing Obama!)
TM #340,
fashion ? This guy is nuts !
He seems to know nothing of history. There's been a very clear and conscious political decision, whether in France, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia, Benelux, Spain (since 1976), not so much in Italy (and we see the results) to take measures to reduce the influence of Christian fundamentalism and its political arm facism. Either through direct limitations on freedom of expression (yes that's something one day Americans will also have to understand, with their permanent delusions of freedom at any cost and their sacrosaint constitution), laws that prohibit hatespeech, government interventionism within the media and the educational system (yes, that's also something Americans don't like), huge limitations on the opening of new places of worship, all sorts of things that Americans always interpret as administrative roadblocks, etc...
Americans are obsessed with freedom of expression, but they don't seem to be that worried about the freedom of thought of those who are endocrinated since their young age into those religious dogmas.
Kierkegaard was right, "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use".
You do realise that you are comparing a millenary religion practiced by close to a billion people and a 40 yold political doctrine maintained by a few hundred people ?
It doesn't seem to you like comparing apples and oranges ?
On top of that, J is railing against those who disagree with his claim, while he is the only one who has made the comparison -- as he first did in #111. it's like excoriating all those Pharyngulans who maintain that Capitalism is a greater evil than Christianity -- all zero of them.
It's an absurd waste of time for me to resume my campaign of confronting "America-haters". The valid points I make will be drowned out in the hysteria anyway.
Is J = Jamie?
Yikes! Thread moved rather faster than expected. I should reload before posting.
Now here, "which is the context", are the long threads the "car crash" threads about politics and religious lunacy or the "nice" threads about developments in science?
The length doesn't measure what people want to hear, but rather what they have to say. The more "objective" threads get comments like "Wow! That's cool!" and "Thanks!", whereas the more "subjective" threads get everyone's two cents. And, it's just a natural fact that there are far more ways to disagree than to agree.
And he can ill afford this, as the valid points in his arguments are already at homeopathic concentrations.
And they're, like, the worst camel breeders ever. I'm patently right.
Hmmm...
Nope. Not goin' there.
Yeah, and we can see how much people love to listen to what other people say ;o)
More seriously, I see what you're saying, but I think thread length is a reasonable measure of interest. I think people like to think they're interested in nice stuff, but have a macabre fascination with the "car crash" stuff.
A thread with a few tens of comments saying "Cool!" or "Thanks!" pales into insignificance beside one with 700 flames. If Pharyngula was packed to its cephalopod gills with science posts, it would be JASB with two dozen readers. It's the "car crash" threads that make it the monster that it is, I think.
Just to pick one thing at random, the French Academy is a bunch of evil motherfuckers. Strangely, this does not make me think any better of US foreign policy.
I think thread length is a reasonable measure of interest.
I disagree and I've noted why, and I have no idea why you think it is, other than your prior belief that people are more interested in car crashes. Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that people are more interested in car crashes, I see no reason to think that thread length measures that interest, given the facts that I pointed out. The way to determine how many people read something is to measure page hits, and but that information isn't on the table.
If Pharyngula was packed to its cephalopod gills with science posts, it would be JASB with two dozen readers. It's the "car crash" threads that make it the monster that it is, I think.
This really isn't fair. You started with the thesis that bad news is more popular than good news, but now you're comparing a single objective topic, science, with the multiplicity of objective and subjective topics that Pharyngula covers. I certainly have no disagreement with your latest statement, but it bears little resemblance to the original one.
I gotta go, but I'll check back in 8 hours or so.
I wasn't playing by a set of rules to "win" or "lose" by scoring points. I see what you're saying and I'm not really disagreeing, more throwing it around. I find your #351 sound and interesting. It is also true that more contentious threads are more apt to digressions: this one has moved far away from it's original topic.
Well, the history of newspaper publishing is strewn with the corpses of papers whose idealistic founders thought that they could sell good news instead of bad. They were dead wrong. Although I don't expect that people are going to list car crashes, axe murders, and cannibalism amongst their interests, they sure seem to like to read about them.
I'm not discounting the interest that people have in positive stuff, indeed, I share that interest, but they seem much more engaged with the negative. What is this engagement if not indicative of interest? How are we to measure interest if not in this way? I agree that if we knew the number of distinct page impressions we could better assess "interest" in a more abstract idealistic sense, but it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to suppose that the pages with the most comments from the greatest number of different commenters are the most read, the most popular, the ones with which people, on average, engage most. From there It doesn't seem like a great leap to say that these are the "most interesting" in the sense of being those that interest the greatest number of people enough for them to comment on them.
Maybe I'm just more of a misanthrope than you.
It's an absurd waste of time for me EVERYONE.
You're an ignorant ass that just - can't - stop, J.
for the sake of everyone's sanity, go away and read a few books or something.
Is J = Jamie?
Certainly could be.
But how evil were all those roads, railways, telegraph lines, farms, sewage systems, modern technology, police service, etc.! Verily, European colonialism was undeniably a relentless and systematic force for the direst evil.
J paraphrases a python sketch from "Life of Brian":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso
unoriginality AND tremendous ignorance in one package.
J is a great example of how one doesn't have to be a creationist to exhibit such traits.