The Atheist Keeps Getting Things Wrong

PZ Myers 2021.

Speaking of Richard Carrier:   He’s an itinerant classics scholar who’d been living off his wife’s income (now divorced because he’d cheated on her multiple times, so that’s gone), who had latched on to the Jesus mythicism grift to sell books and get atheist speaking gigs and to pump up his Patreon account with misogynist resentment money…..He doesn’t have an academic reputation……(he has) cemented his reputation as a sex pest, rather than as a serious scholar. No legitimate academic institution is going to touch him — one quick google will label him as radioactive — and he’s going to be forever on the fringe.

PZ Myers 2012.

“Carrier cold-cocks Ehrman”: This is great: Richard Carrier Blogs totally destroys Bart Ehrman’s argument for the reality of a historical Jesus. Jesus is a legend, like King Arthur or Robin Hood or Paul Bunyan.

So PZ now effectively admits that he once was promoting the views of a sex pest and grifter without an academic reputation who peddled in fringe theories. Of course, several of us easily recognized that Carrier was not someone to be trusted.  As just one of many examples, I was immediately able to doubt his academic standing:

More Lies From LGBTQ Activists

Democratic Senators and activist groups promoting a false, conclusively disproven narrative about the Pulse shootings for their own benefits. Anti-LGBT animus was not part of that massacre. It dishonors the memory of the victims – & the LGBT cause – to lie about what happened. https://t.co/bhjpeaVSS5

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 12, 2021

A more detailed analysis here.

More Misleading LGBTQ Propaganda

A recent Axios article informs us: 2021 set to become deadliest year on record for trans Americans.

The article tells us:

28 transgender and gender non-conforming people — nearly all Black and Latina women — have been killed this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which has tracked such deaths since 2013.

And then we learn:

LGBTQ advocates say the record number of bills targeting trans children this year has encouraged more widespread transphobia and violence across the country, the 19th reports.

Hogwash.  There is no evidence that  “the record number of bills targeting trans children this year has encouraged more widespread transphobia and violence across the country.”  None.  This is merely a propagandistic claim from “advocates.”   If the correlation is your evidence, this is no different from pointing out that the amount the USA spends on science and technology correlates with the suicide rate by hanging and strangulation.

Why Does China Act Like the Lab Leak Hypothesis Is True?

As I mentioned before, I have not looked into the origin of COVID-19, but there are two macro-facts that cause me to suspect the “lab leak” hypothesis might be true. First, it has always been quite the coincidence to have a coronovirus pandemic break out in the very city (and only city in China) where bat-related coronovirus research was being conducted.

Second, there is the simple fact that the government of China is communist and communist governments around the globe have a long track record of at least two things – lying and incompetence. Meaning that it’s not exatcly difficult to conceive of something like a “lab leak” occuring in a communist-run lab.

Furthermore, let’s face it – China has long behaved as if the lab leak hypothesis is true. Consider an investigative AP story that was just published:

The area is of intense scientific interest because it may hold clues to the origins of the coronavirus that has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide. Yet for scientists and journalists, it has become a black hole of no information because of political sensitivity and secrecy.

A bat research team visiting recently managed to take samples but had them confiscated, two people familiar with the matter said. Specialists in coronaviruses have been ordered not to speak to the press. And a team of Associated Press journalists was tailed by plainclothes police in multiple cars who blocked access to roads and sites in late November.

More than a year since the first known person was infected with the coronavirus, an AP investigation shows the Chinese government is strictly controlling all research into its origins, clamping down on some while actively promoting fringe theories that it could have come from outside China.

The government is handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to scientists researching the virus’ origins in southern China and affiliated with the military, the AP has found. But it is monitoring their findings and mandating that the publication of any data or research must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping, according to internal documents obtained by the AP. A rare leak from within the government, the dozens of pages of unpublished documents confirm what many have long suspected: The clampdown comes from the top.

While I a not saying the lab leak hypothesis is true or supported by the scientific evidence, I can say if the lab leak hypothesis turned out to be true, I would not be shocked or surprised.

Post-Christian Pride

Behold the modern-day, proud secularist:

If you would only abandon your childish belief in your ridiculous god, you too could appreciate such proud, modern enlightenment being offered on a child’s channel.

One question: At 1:17, what’s with the communist fist symbol?

Phil Torres Lashes Out At His Old Heroes

Phil Torres wrote an article entitled, Godless grifters: How the New Atheists merged with the far right: What once seemed like a bracing intellectual movement has degenerated into a pack of abusive, small-minded bigots.

Torres does a good job cataloging  various problems with several of the New Atheist leaders(the pack of abusive, small-minded bigots), but I’m more interested in the fact that Torres was totally hoodwinked by their show.  Torres claims that the New Atheist movement “was inspiring — really inspiring.”  He confesses that the New Atheists were the heroes he had longed for: “The “New Atheist” movement, which emerged from the bestselling books of the aforementioned authors, was the intellectual community that many of us 15 or so years ago were desperately looking for.” 

Torres then summarizes it as follows:

New Atheism appeared to offer moral clarity, it emphasized intellectual honesty and it embraced scientific truths about the nature and workings of reality. It gave me immense hope to know that in a world overflowing with irrationality, there were clear-thinking individuals with sizable public platforms willing to stand up for what’s right and true — to stand up for sanity in the face of stupidity.

And then adds:

Fast-forward to the present: What a grift that was! Many of the most prominent New Atheists turned out to be nothing more than self-aggrandizing, dogmatic, irascible, censorious, morally compromised people

What’s missing from Torres article is an explanation for what opened his eyes?  How did he go from being deeply inspired by the apparent rationality and intellectual honesty of these best-selling authors to a pack of abusive, small-minded bigots?  He never says.

Torres is right about the movement being “a grift.”  But some of us knew this from the beginning.  I, for example, began pointing out the various problems with the movement before Dawkins ‘ God Delusion was even published.  And my criticisms (which have long since been validated over time) had little to do with Dawkins’ et al. being atheists.  It was about their intellectual dishonesty in trying to sell themselves as champions of reason, science, and evidence. 

So how is it that I was so clearly right while atheists like Torres and Myers are still to this day wiping all that egg off their faces?  I’m not quite sure.  But the clues/evidence were always pretty obvious.  Let me provide just a couple of examples that should have told Torres the New Atheists were grifters from early on.

Ex-New Atheists Go After New Atheists

PZ Myers draws attention to an article by Phil Torres that is very critical of New Atheist leaders.

It’s been about four years since I posted my autopsy on the New Atheist movement,

The New Atheist Movement: An Autopsy

so it is nice to see ex-New Atheists like Torres and Myers acknowledge the movement is indeed dead. The problem is that since both men were once starry-eyed fanboys of the movement, their critiques can come across as misleading sour grapes.  As someone who recognized the “the grift” of New Atheism from the beginning, allow me to provide a more accurate account.

Snowflake Myers At It Again

I don’t know much about Steven Crowder, but I wanted to document yet another example of a social justice atheist demanding that differing viewpoints be banned:

Why did YouTube allow Steven Crowder back on? Steven Crowder, the right-wing “comedian”, was previously banned from YouTube for hate speech. They’ve lifted his ban, though, and he’s back in action. He’s been mocking pride week in his inimitably repulsive way……Wise up, YouTube. Make this guy gone. He’s not a comedian at all, he’s just a mouthpiece for hate.

Y’know, considering all the various times atheist activists like Myers have said and done offensive and hateful things, I have never once argued that they should be banned. I think this contrast speaks to the intellectually superior nature of my views. Atheists like Myers demand opposing views be silenced and banned. Why? They feel threatened by thinking different than theirs. As they even admit, they feel “unsafe.” Me? Unlike them, I am not intellectually threatened by opposing viewpoints, which is why I don’t think they need to be banned. Instead, I favor the approach that highlights the irrational essense of opposing views.

Atheists like PZ Myers favor censorhsip and banning.

Christian theists such as myself favor the ues of reason expressed with free speech.

Gotta love it.

Bureaucratic Slop and Scientists Making Death Threats

I have not had the time to look into this all that much, but I found this except from this interesting article worth note:

“A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.

In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “warned” leaders within his bureau “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.”

There are reasons to doubt the lab-leak hypothesis. There is a long, well-documented history of natural spillovers leading to outbreaks, even when the initial and intermediate host animals have remained a mystery for months and years, and some expert virologists say the supposed oddities of the SARS-CoV-2 sequence have been found in nature.

But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield told Vanity Fair. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.””

Critical race theory: “All White people are racist!”

 Further evidence of the extremist, radicalized essence of critical race “theorists”:

Brandeis University assistant dean Kate Slater says that “all White people are racist” and has declared that she hates “whiteness.”

“Yes, all White people are racist in that all White people have been conditioned in a society where one’s racial identity determines life experiences/outcomes and Whiteness is the norm and the default. That includes me!” read an all-caps Instagram post from Slater, who serves as assistant dean of student affairs.

She added in Saturday’s post that while she doesn’t “hate White people,” she does hate “Whiteness.”

So far, no other critical race “theorist” or ally has criticized or disputed Slater’s position, so we can safely assume she speaks for CRT. So if you find yourself at a local school board trying to impose a CRT agenda, feel free to cite Slater’s views.

Note also that Slater is not some random kook from the internet, but instead occupies a position of power and privilege – she is an assistant dean at a University. 

Of course, this is just more evidence for the decline of American academia.