Love is only real to them if it’s a thing

Sastra has a very illuminating comment* on PZ’s The magic of denying reality.

She quotes Colin Tudge’s bad-faith misreading of Dawkins:

Everything else – including things we might think exist, like jealousy and love – derive from that material base and are to a large extent illusory.

And comments

Supernaturalists seem to have a lot of trouble trying to make sense of abstractions and levels of experience: they want to take everything literally, as irreducible substances. Love is only real to them if it’s a thing, a sort of spiritual-substance which is made of neither matter nor energy because it is the immaterial essence of love. Ironically, that makes them super-materialists — spinning material into finer and finer substances until like only comes from like. Love is derived from love. Otherwise, it can only have the same properties that were there in its origin.

Despite their claims to be so comfortable with “higher levels” of reality, supernaturalists are concrete thinkers. They can only make sense of immaterial abstractions by turning them into spirit-things in a spirit-world.

I don’t think I’d thought of that before, and it’s very damn interesting.

*Nothing unusual there.

No one ever talked to me for more than a minute

About appearing Normal, and being different (or not), and independence – Patricia Churchland has a telling little illustrative story in Braintrust. In a section of chapter 6, “Skills for a Social Life,” she discusses mimicry as a social capacity – it’s reassuring because it makes prediction easier.

As social sizing up develops over a few minutes, assuming I got the preliminary signals I needed, I may be motivated to reassure you. So I play my part in mimicry so that you do not start anxiously watching me, making me even more uncomfortable. [p 160] [Read more…]

We understand the concept

As we saw, Jordan Sekulow complained that

Whether it’s Governor Rick Perry calling for prayer for our nation, Congresswoman Bachmann discussing her “calling” to run for elected office, or Governor Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, it is now acceptable for many in the media to ridicule the religious beliefs of one particular group of Americans – conservatives.

Let’s have a look at that first link. It’s Jordan Sekulow himself saying what a good thing prayer is. [Read more…]

The God-given freedoms of its people

Now for Jordan Sekulow’s post itself.

He’s pissed off because the pesky leftwing atheist media have been saying Dominionists are Dominionists.

Whether it’s Governor Rick Perry calling for prayer for our nation, Congresswoman Bachmann discussing her “calling” to run for elected office, or Governor Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, it is now acceptable for many in the media to ridicule the religious beliefs of one particular group of Americans – conservatives. [Read more…]

Infiltration

Here’s a question. Why is the Washington Post providing a platform for Jordan Sekulow, Director of Policy and International Operations for the American Center for Law and Justice?

Founded by Pat Robertson, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) and its Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow quickly established themselves as key players in the right-wing movement, litigating a variety of cases at all levels, including the Supreme Court. The ACLJ has been particularly active in fighting marriage equality and defending the Pledge of Allegiance, while Sekulow has maintained very close ties to the Bush White House and played a central role in pushing for the confirmation of Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito.

It reminds me of Obama – listen to all points of view, invite everyone to the table, be even-handed to a fault, reach out to your enemies while abandoning your allies, model good behavior toward opponents and assume that they will do likewise. Right-wing newspapers and magazines don’t give left-wing commentators a platform, so why do putatively liberal or centrist or at least reality-based newspapers and magazines give right-wing theocrats a platform? Are they thinking the right-wing theocrats will reciprocate? Has it escaped their attention that this never ever happens? [Read more…]

Tom Martin on “whoriarchy”

Remember our friend Tom Martin, the MRA who is suing LSE for being unfair to men? He just sent me a message to let me know he’s done an interview with two other MRAs so that I could listen to it if I wanted to. Nah, I don’t. But I looked around a little and found that after his chatting at my place he did some chatting at Cath Elliott’s place. Oh boy; treats.

I’ll give you some highlights. [Read more…]