Stephanie Zvan attempts to untangle the knotty history of this whatever-it-is secular organization. I’m still confused, but at least I’m happier that I’m not a member!
Something else makes me happy. While they were empire-building and trying to recruit every major blogger and organization to their banner, they never asked me to join. Not once. Not so much as a casual inquiry. They’re calling me a “foremost leader”, so it can’t just be that they thought I was of no consequence — I think they knew that my laughter over the phone might prove deafening. Or that they already hated the idea of sharing a space with them.
If you need an update on what the heck is going on with the morphing secular club, that wanker from Atheist Ireland, and me, Ashley Miller summarizes it all for you.
I was sure it was some fucked up story, but that is way more fucked up than I could’ve imagined. Mind blown.
Ha!
You’re jealous!
(just thought I’d be the first to say it)
Just imagine, you could have been officially denounced by them instead of just getting the second-hand denouncement via Atheist Ireland.
/picks up cigar
I would never join any club that would have Michael Shermer as a member.
Say the magic word and the duck’ll fly down and sue you for $100.
/wiggles eyebrows
The thing that gets me most is that almost all of their stuff sounds like something a Jr high schooler might write up for a club that never happens.
Well, it’s Freethoughblogs, the atheist equivalent of Communist Russia with all that social justice and so forth. The Free World, embodied by the SCAGSCSPI, could never bow down misguided fanaticis such as yourself, PZ, much less ally themselves to you. Led by great men like Shermer and Dawkins and the occasional token woman, capitatheism shall prevail!*
*This would be the perfect excuse to mint some In Shermer We Trust coins. Worth sod all because noone wants them, they could be used to fill in lakes or as ballast to help balance the cargo aboard ships and airplanes.
P.S.: If you do get into another cold war, please, please, please start another space race. The last one was such a boon to our species.
SPI, teaching the Keystone Cops about incompetency.
I just can’t get over this idea that groups were supposed to “join” in order for the SPI to basically take credit for any work that group did. At least that is what is sounds like. The SPI doesn’t appear to have actually produced anything – well anything other than smarmy photos and mind-boggling displays of hubris.
Do they think that they are still the cool kids at high school and that if “we” will do their homework, “we” will be more an adequately repaid by being allowed to hang out with them ? That seems to be the mentality.
Especially since their goal seems to be smarming up so that they (the “thinky” ones) can hang out with the even cooler kids – politicians and religious leaders. All that needle moving they are apparently doing somewhere. (Ick that was an image I could have done without).
WTH?
Well, given how readily Nugent and Lindsay, among others, are to do just that…
I can’t get over the cover photo on their web site and Facebook page that has Shermer with his arm slung around the shoulders of a female colleague*.
*I’m sure someone more savvy than myself knows her name, but I can’t find her in the list of fellows.
That’s Edwina Rogers, former Republican lobbyist, and now chief executive of SPI.
Also, she who wraps her presents in sheets of real money.
Pretty much. If they’re not the cool kids, I guess we’re supposed to think of them as mercenaries and bullies (or a protection racket?), which we want our side and can’t do without, even though they don’t actually give a shit or contribute anything that’s useful or any good at all. That’s somehow supposed to be their sales pitch.
The bad news is that they want to break up now, because we’re just not good enough for them. So sad. We’ll always have Paris, assholes. Now just fucking leave already.
oh jebus
That was her?
Now don’t I feel silly? But it makes Shermer’s arm slung around her shoulders feel like more of an intentional statement. See? Nice guy. He’s like this all the time. The entire shot is somewhat casual, but that still rings as out of place. Or perhaps I’m reading too much into it.
That’s a lot of words to say PZ Myers is a poopyhead.
Oops wrong thread, but you know what I’m referring to.
What the fuck is this kerfuckle?
Look at the photograph – fucking grinning neocons. The global secular council’s audience is 100% New White Supremacist Atheists. Further proof they’re a tribe/cult.
Secular Coalition for America → Global Secular Council → Secular Policy Institute → KAOS
Privileged right wing fuckwads are taking handouts to do a whole lotta nothing while taking credit for other peoples work?
Those same no accounts are then using their officialishness to attempt to circle wagons around a rapist and his supporters?
They’re doing that by claiming they are basically heroes battling against the wicked foes who would come for other white dudes precious, precious privilege in the night?
Why am I not remotely amazed?
Their primary goal is to perpetuate right wing ideologies in the atheist movement. The right has understood for a while now, that while the conservative Christians have been very useful, their numbers are falling, and they need a new brand of tools. Good for them, the “libertarian” movent tried something similar a long time ago.
Reading about this whole thing, I kept having this scene in my head:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE?rel=0&w=560&h=315%5D
Oops, I fail at the embed.
numerobis
Good.
No one wants embedded videos, here.
Links are fine.
Have they issued their Exsurge Domine?
Multiple SlymeTroll infestation alert, rape apologetics level from the start, for the Ashley Miller post linked at the end of the OP.
Speak for yourself, chigau.
Embedded videos aren’t a bad thing!
Also, here’s the video that numerobis was trying to post.
https://youtu.be/gb_qHP7VaZE
Embedding videos slows down loading.
For people with limited access-time, that is a bad thing.
Tough cookies. I prefer embedded videos because I can see what it is and decide if it’s worth playing, instead of having to click a blind link and hoping it isn’t something I can’t unsee.
Damn you Kitty, I was going to do a joke about the Popular People’s Secular Coalition Front for America. Where white guys like me would spend the day waggling our fingers at people that don’t respect us, or the nice pastor that lives up the road from us.
But you’ve gone and ruined it now, you foremost leader, you.
Splitter!
Wait, I thought their current name was Thinky Leaders Think Tank For Kids Who Think Good And Want To Help Other Kids Think Good Too!
llewelly,
I could be wrong, of course, but I don’t actually see this organization thinking that far. It looks like it exists to promote its members, add to their personal wealth and give them more power.
—
OT,
For my own amusement, I imagined this in posh British upper-class accent.
Is mangling names of organizations as petty as mangling individual people’s names?
Because, as mentioned elsewhere, I think I may not be able to help but see their name as the Secular Policing Institute.
You made me look. Wow. Just wow.
That first panel of fellows is quite illuminating:
Sam Harris — pro-gun, pro-Israel, anti-feminist, Right-leaning Libertarian and foreign policy hawk
Steven Pinker — pro-gun, pro-Israel, anti-feminist hard Right Libertarian with a perpetual boner for Wall Street
Michael Shermer — right-leaning Libertarian and…you know the rest
Throw in renowned sexual assault expert and social media personality Richard Dawkins, and Jeffrey Epstein’s mate Lawrence Krauss and you’ve got an organization that it would be safe to avoid.
Further to my comment on “professionalism” of yesterday: You also don’t include cat jokes in your official informational material (including your website). I mean, I take a back seat to no one in my affection for our feline friends, but it really makes you look like you’re not to be taken seriously. Also: try to avoid being founded by a convicted con-man.
I’ve decided SPI stands for Sociopathic Poopheads International.
With apologies to Monty Python, and anyone who has already thought of doing this:
“Are you the Secular Policy Front?”
“Secular Policy People’s Front! We’re The People’s Front of
Secular Policy! Secular Policy People’s Front, God!”
“Listen, the only people we hate more
than the Romans, are the fucking Secular Policy People’s Front.”
“And the Secular Policy Popular People’s Front!
And the People’s Front of Secular Policy!”
“The People’s Front of Secular Policy. Splitters!”
“We are the People’s Front of Secular Policy!”
“Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.”
“People’s Front! God…”
“Whatever happened to the Popular Front?”
“He’s over there.”
Thank you for the transcript, sprocket. I envision PZ as being the Popular Front in this setup — he’s got the beard for it!
chigau: basically every pharyngula home page has one or more youtube embeds in it, so your browser has already loaded all the associated resources just by going to the home page. After that, it’s quite cheap to add one more embed. What I notice bogging my browser down is the ads: unlike Google, a lot of ads networks don’t seem to think that responsiveness is useful.
WMDkitty: you gave us a fish so we can
eatwatch videos for a day. Can you teach me how to fish?My comment made me decide to finally subscribe. Holy crap this website is so much faster without ads!
numerobis
My iPad reloads the page every time I click on the tab.
…
If you want to embed a video copy/paste the address into your comment.
It embeds automatically.
If you want to be polite, don’t make the address the last thing in your comment, then it doesn’t embed.
Previewing is a good idea.
WMDKitty — Survivor #30:
It’s not hard to make the link descriptive:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE">Splitters!</a>Makes: Splitters!
… and not embedding really is a courtesy to those on low-bandwidth connections.
In addition to link descriptions (and simply seeing the web address, when that’s informative), there’s also the option of getting an add-on for firefox (like Thumbnail Zoom Plus but I’m sure there are others) that shows a thumbnail of the youtube video (or other image links) with a mouseover, as you would see with embedded videos. You can fiddle around with options if you don’t like it happening in certain places, but it’s pretty useful generally. And I guess I use a greasemonkey script or something to prevent auto-embedding here, because I think it’s annoying. So embedded or not, the page isn’t clogged up, and it’s my choice whether I want to judge a youtube link based on its “cover,” which is easily done with my mouse. Anyway, these days, a lot of what optimizes your web surfing or makes it more convenient for you personally is not really up to other people.
I Don’t Wanna Stop
I thought the story of their origin would be weird, but I was not prepared for the exploding clown car of stupid that Stephanie tracked down.
By next year they will be the Circular Papacy Adjutant and they STILL won’t have achieved anything useful.
Sounds like a bunch of creepy/skeevy people in search of legitimacy and validation. When I get that vibe off someone, I run like hell – because people like that are always followed by a trail of drama and conflict.
Cross posted from Ophelia’s Butterflies and Wheels:
Harumph! Harumph I say. That blighter from the provinces, ZP Mayer or whatever his name is, is a bloody bounder. He was rude to that Irish chappie, I forget his name, Nougat or something like that. Anyway, old Nougat has tossed Mayer out of his club. What say we support Nougat by tossing Mayer out of our club.
Is this Mayer a member of our club?
Pish. Tish even. It makes no difference whether Mayer belongs to our club or not. We don’t want his type in our club so we’ll ban him preemptively. A rotter like Mayer doesn’t think thinky thoughts like us and might not even recognize our primacy in the secular globe of which we are the Institute of which or something. Sorry, lost my train of thought for a moment there. Anyway, we’ll not only not extend an invitation to Mayer to join our club, we’ll make sure he does not join by making him an ex-member before he even becomes a member.
Oh jolly good. Intern, make it happen.
Al Dente, the fucking Irish wanker is simply a neocon. Why else would he fall out with PZ, who has led the charge against the fucking neocons.
New White Supremacist Atheists became the new Islamophobes, their invectives against Muslims resembling the rowdy, uneducated ramblings of backwoods racists. The Irish wanker is simply a fucking by-product of this thinking. Only fuckng neocons smear. PZ is simply telling the truth!
I’m so fucking rage-filled with the New White Supremacist Atheists at the moment.
melanie @ 49:
You might want to check your humour and sarcasm meters. Also, the answer to every disagreement is not “neocon!”. In this particular case, there’s a specific history fueling the ongoing wanking.
That link Ashley Miller’s is dead useful; I actually understand what’s going on now.
But there are some ‘pitters in the comments, and they compared Shermer to ogvorbis, and now I am so incredibly fucking angry I can barely express my disgust for those slimy little shits.