Kooks
pharyngula | August 10, 2011Every morning when I get up and get on the computer, the first thing I do is delete the pile of spam from Dennis Markuze, each of which is usually cross-posted to 50 to 100 other people. Every time I fire up Twitter, the first thing I do is clear the garbage Dennis Markuze has left there; yesterday I blocked and reported spam from over 25 Markuze accounts, amounting to several hundred messages.
You know what? This is wrong. I shouldn't have to do this. Over the years — I've been getting these threats from Markuze since 1993 — it's gradually grown from an occasional deranged message on usenet…
pharyngula | August 1, 2011Newt Gingrich has 1,325,842 followers on twitter.
Who cares, you might be asking. The criteria for being popular on twitter are rather different than the criteria for being a competent statesman; if twitter mattered in that way, Ashton Kucher would be president. It's irrelevant. But Gingrich is unhappy because his vast appeal is unappreciated by the media: "I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn't count because if it counted I'd still be a candidate; since I can't be a candidate that can't count."
Wow. Gingrich believes having lots of…
pharyngula | July 29, 2011Hedges has been totally nuts for the last few years: he's got this crazy irrational hysteria about atheists that makes him utterly unhinged whenever he writes about us. His latest is of a piece with his mania:
The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as…
pharyngula | July 28, 2011Jon Stewart of the Daily Show did a marvelous job of showing how right-wingers were desperately straining to get out from under the taint of Breivik's clearly extremist nationalist/rightist/Christian/anti-Muslim ideology. They're clearly in denial.
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But here's another case. The Discovery Institute, under the name of that wretched 'scholar' John West, has gone through Breivik's manifesto…
pharyngula | July 27, 2011How fun! Fulwiler noticed that her claim to have five Catholic teachings that make sense to atheists actually didn't, you know, make sense to any atheists, me included, so she's now trying hard to rationalize it. She has a new post talking about reasoning with atheists that is even more confused and hilarious than the last. Here's her first excuse:
I evidently did not make it clear enough that all of my examples were meant only to illustrate the intellectual consistency within Catholicism, and therefore assumed that you would be in a discussion with an atheist who would stipulate belief in…
pharyngula | July 26, 2011It's sad. The terrorism in Norway was by a right wing nationalist extremist of the pale-skinned, Christian variety, and it's like we broke our home-grown right-wingers' small, feeble, crumbly hearts with that news. But have no fear! They are dogged and single-minded, and they will find a way to blame the desired targets of retribution one way or another! Latest case: Pat Buchanan. He regrets that the terrorist was a cowardly, murdering punk, but we are supposed to recognize that Breivik may be right.
But, awful as this atrocity was, native-born and homegrown terrorism is not the macro-threat…
pharyngula | July 25, 2011Glenn Beck really is contemptible. Here's how he sees the murders in Norway:
As the thing started to unfold, and then there was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth or whatever — I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing. But anyway, so there's this political camp, and some crazy man goes and starts shooting kids.
Who does a camp about politics? You mean, like the teabaggers?
But wait! There's more! He rambles on and on, and claims that he predicted this was coming, and eventually gets around to summarizing his…
pharyngula | July 25, 2011I'm getting a clearer picture of Jennifer Fulwiler. She's very much a Catholic, she thinks she's an expert on atheists, and she likes things in fives. First it was five misconceptions atheists have about Catholics, and now she's written five Catholic teachings that make sense to atheists. As if she'd know. She claims to have been an atheist once, but her list of stuff that makes sense indicates that she was an awfully Catholic atheist.
Purgatory. Why? "it made sense to me because it explained how heaven can be a place of perfect love, and God can still be merciful to people who had some…
pharyngula | July 20, 2011How do people stomach this stuff? Bill Dembski was on the Bible Answer Man broadcast, so I tried to listen — the host goes on and on about his dogma, and it makes no sense. "Here's what the Bible says, it's true, therefore you have to believe." And then he introduces Dembski as someone who uses science to justify Christian superstition in a "biblically satisfying" way.
Then Delusional Dembski gets on, and the first thing he does is claim the evidence for design in nature has been getting stronger and stronger…and he claims that the reason scientists haven't been embracing it is the problem of…
pharyngula | July 18, 2011Christopher Monckton, the lunatic climate change denier, has been trying to trade on his false authority, claiming to be a member of the House of Lords.
When asked by ABC Sydney's Adam Spencer if he was a member, he [Monckton] said: "Yes, but without the right to sit or vote ... [The Lords] have not yet repealed by act of parliament the letters patent creating the peerage and until they do I am a member of the house, as my passport records. It says I am the Right Honourable Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. So get used to it."
So the House of Lords has published a formal reply.
The letter,…
pharyngula | July 13, 2011I don't know whether to be pleased or dismayed at this story of an obsessed Minnesotan who turned to crime for petty revenge. Barry Ardolf got mad at his neighbors, the Kostolniks, because they reported him to the police for kissing their 4-year-old child on the mouth, which is already a bit creepy, and then he got really creepy.
The man, a Medtronic computer technician, downloaded a Wi-Fi hacking program to tear into his neighbors WEP encryption. Ardolf created a fake Myspace page as well as several fake emails for Matt Kostolnik. The hacker then posted child porn on the Myspace page and…
pharyngula | July 13, 2011If you work for the Florida Museum of Natural History, someone doesn't like you. For years, someone has been vandalizing the vehicles of workers at the museum.
It started small. Darwin Fish emblems would be ripped off cars a few times a year. Undeterred, the victims would simply replace them. Then bumper stickers were scraped off. Then notes containing prayers were left on cars. And now the vandal has apparently taken the next step: driving nails into tires. One researcher said she discovered a long nail had been deliberately forced into the side rim of her new tire, destroying it. Another…
pharyngula | July 6, 2011I got an email from someone requesting advice. I can't imagine how he thought of me when in this situation.
There's a group of geocentrists -- specifically, these guys -- who are trying to film a documentary, and they want to interview my advisor, Dragan Huterer. A couple of months ago, they contacted Dragan under false pretenses: they said they were filming a documentary on modern cosmology. They were interested in coming to a conference and interviewing Dragan. We had no reason to suspect anything strange until just before the conference, when one of the people running the film company made…
pharyngula | July 4, 2011American Atheists is sponsoring banners to fly over select areas in 26 states to celebrate the Fourth of July. The banners read:
God-LESS America -- Atheists.org
and
Atheism is Patriotic - Atheists.org
These are perfectly pleasant, inoffensive messages — that Silverman guy is such a timid, inoffensive fellow, I'm going to have to school him next time I see him — and simply affirm that the unbelievers are also part of this country, a good thing to remind people of as they listen to "God Bless America" before setting off small explosive devices.
But of course, panties are being wadded, pearls…
pharyngula | June 27, 2011Pat Robertson is just losing it. His mind was always rather decrepit, but it looks like the rest of him is catching up now. He's also repeating his familiar claim that no society can 'embrace' homosexuality and survive, and now he's saying that god is going to destroy America for allowing gay marriage.
The lesson I take from his senile ramble: we're OK as long as we don't do any angel-raping. Consensual gay sex: god is cool with that. Raping angels: god will nuke you.
pharyngula | June 27, 2011Lord Monckton, the wacky climate skeptic, demonstrates another common feature of these crackpots: he doesn't just have one domain of supreme quackery, it extends everywhere…and he is now claiming to have a cure for HIV and the common cold. I haven't been able to track down what this panacea is, other than that it is a drug and that he has patented it.
pharyngula | June 24, 2011It's demons. The whole state is infested with 'em.
There was a big conference on exorcism offered by the Catholic church in Texas; it was apparently well-attended by an enthusiastic crowd who were anxious to learn how to purge the state of evil invisible magic beings. Bishop Pfeifer had this to say:
Pfeifer said he believes there is demonic influence in West Texas manifested through cults…
Oh, sure, he went on to say the demons were secular and on the internet, but I think he would have been better served looking at the wackaloons babbling at his conference.
pharyngula | June 23, 2011After the public scorn Scott Adams received in response to his appalling "pegs and holes" post that tried to play the self-pity card — Adams is so disadvantaged by being a man — he sent out an invitation to various magazines to engage in a public dialog.
I'd like to offer an opportunity to one of the writers at Salon, Huffington Post, Jezebel, Mediate, or Mediabistro. Allow me to interview you, by email, for this blog, on the topic of why you so vehemently disagree with your hallucination of my opinion. (Fair warning: It won't work out well for you.)
Salon took him up on it. It isn't working…
pharyngula | June 22, 2011I patiently explained all that was wrong with Be Scofield's characterization of atheists; now he has written back and said
I am wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm just going to focus on his first weird point, because the whole thing is disposable, but I feel like making a token effort anyway.
A good part of his argument was an analogy run amuck. He tried to argue that criticizing liberal religion for extremist religious actions must mean I don't like liberal politics (that is, I must be an anarchist!) or I am a hypocrite. I explained yesterday that this wasn't the case, I have no problem with the…
pharyngula | June 22, 2011This email is different than the usual rants and threats and claims about creationism disproving evolution — instead, my correspondent claims that the Catholic church knew about evolution all along. All I learned from the letter, though, is that he doesn't have a clue about what evolution is.
Dear Professor Myers,
I am very confused [Ah, if only he'd stopped there, the letter would have been perfect] as to why you think evolution is incompatible with Christianity. Since its earliest days, Catholics have maintained the mutability of species. For example:
1) Saint Jerome commented on Jeremiah…