When I first heard about this idea for repairing damaged tracheas, I thought it was brilliant. Strip the cells from the cartilaginous framework of a cadaver’s trachea — or build your own immunologically inert framework from other materials — and then populate it with stem cells from the patient themself, so you end up with a new, living trachea with immunocompatible cells that you can transplant into the patient. No rejection issues! No scrabbling for compatible donors!

It’s still a brilliant idea, but the execution is wanting. Paolo Machiarini, a famous surgeon and proponent of this treatment, has been exposed as a fraud. And worse still, the entire medical establishment that welcomed and absorbed him as one of their own has been exposed as, shall we say, insufficiently critical of their colleagues.

Oh, he’s a real doctor, so he’s not that kind of fraud. But he is prone to narcissistically inflating his importance. For instance, in his personal life, he was engaged and announced his wedding plans.

By the time the program aired, in mid-2014, the couple were planning their marriage. It would be a star-studded event. Macchiarini had often boasted to Alexander of his famous friends. Now they were on the wedding guest list: the Obamas, the Clintons, Vladimir Putin, Nicolas Sarkozy and other world leaders. Andrea Bocelli was to sing at the ceremony. None other than Pope Francis would officiate, and his papal palace in Castel Gandolfo would serve as the venue. That’s what Macchiarini told his fiancee.

Only none of that was true. He lied to his fiancee — even with her, he had to puff himself up. Also, it turned out that he was already married to someone else, and had been for 30 years.

That’s horrible enough. But then it also turned out that he’d been lying about his results.

…Macchiarini’s artificial windpipes were not the life-saving wonders we’d all been led to believe. On the contrary, they seemed to do more harm than good – something that Macchiarini had for years concealed or downplayed in his scientific articles, press releases and interviews.

That’s an understatement. His patients died agonizingly.

Beyene’s death two and a half years after the operation, caused by the failure of his artificial airway, was a grueling ordeal. According to Pierre Delaere, a professor of respiratory surgery at KU Leuven, Belgium, Macchiarini’s experiments were bound to end badly. As he said in Experimenten: “If I had the option of a synthetic trachea or a firing squad, I’d choose the last option because it would be the least painful form of execution.”

Then there were the ethical lapses. There are rules about experimentation, especially human experimentation, and he and his institution just ignored them.

He could do pretty much as he pleased. In the first couple of years at Karolinska, he put plastic airways into three patients. Since this was radically new, Macchiarini and his colleagues should have tested it on animals first. They didn’t.

Likewise, they didn’t undertake a proper risk assessment of the procedure, nor did Macchiarini’s team seek government permits for the plastic windpipes, stem cells, and chemical “growth factors” they used. They didn’t even seek the approval of Stockholm’s ethical review board, which is based at Karolinska.

Though Macchiarini was in the public eye, he was able to sidestep the usual rules and regulations. Or rather, his celebrity status helped him do so. Karolinska’s leadership expected big things from their superstar, things that would bring prestige and funding to the institute.

This story is truly ripe for an in-depth analysis by philosophers and sociologists of science (oh, I forgot, science is always objective and non-ideological and independent of social influences, so maybe none of this happened).

Support for Macchiarini remained strong, even as his patients began to die. In part, this is because the field of windpipe repair is a niche area. Few people at Karolinska, especially among those in power, knew enough about it to appreciate Delaere’s claims. Also, in such a highly competitive environment, people are keen to show allegiance to their superiors and wary of criticising them. The official report into the matter dubbed this the “bandwagon effect”.

With Macchiarini’s exploits endorsed by management and breathlessly reported in the media, it was all too easy to jump on that bandwagon.

Yeah, and when whistleblowers tried to flag Macchiarini’s shortcuts and dishonest evaluations, they were the ones punished, not the superstar of regenerative medicine.

It’s an excellent article that finds critical problems at all levels — read the whole thing. The science isn’t there yet; it turns out that the stem cells were not repopulating and rebuilding functional windpipes. The press loved a charismatic surgeon, though. The institutions he worked in loved the money and good press he brought in. The patients flocked to him because he offered hope. His colleagues wanted a ride on that bandwagon. And it was all built on lies and wishful thinking.

A few days ago, I had a couple of exchanges with a well-known and well-regarded YouTube atheist who recited a set of familiar tropes. I’ve blurred out their identity below, despite that being against all of my instincts (you say stuff, own it) because Stephanie Zvan also commented on it, and she’s being courteous. But damn, I’ve been hearing this demand for politeness for over a decade now, and it’s getting old.

Here’s the deal: we are supposed to be civil, polite, and supportive of people in the atheist movement, no matter what they say, in the name of “unity”. If we disagree publicly, we are characterized as “the Outrage Brigade” and slandered with hyperbole, while being accused of slandering people with hyperbole. I have, for instance, a great deal of respect for Dawkins’ work and talents as a science communicator, and I also like him personally, but if I disagree with some of his comments, I’m told that I’ve tossed their entire life and work into the shit-can. This is not true, although the defenders of the status quo think it is — that any challenge to any aspect of a Great Leader’s opinions is a black-and-white demonization of everything they’ve ever said.

Unfortunately, Richard Dawkins just tweeted this.

Great timing. Thanks for making my point for me. By the way, what do we deserve? Trump?

It’s very nice that he can remain a friend with Peter Boghossian on some personal level. He’s still a terrible person with some very bad ideas. I am not persuaded to appreciate those very bad ideas because Blurred-Out-Atheist thinks they’re a peachy person. I’m not going to sing kumbaya with someone who’s endorsing regressive, hateful ideas because Blurred-Out-Atheist has waved them away as mere “disagreements” and is willing to say so in private email to his pals.

I pointed out the irony of telling some peole to be nicer in the name of unity while also labeling them an “Outrage Brigade” and accusing them of “springing into a frothing rage” over relatively minor disagreements. But mostly I backed away.

See? Not springing into frothing rage. I filed it away and said to myself that I’ll cool off for a few days and see if this guy will see the light of reason.

Nope. He posted this.

This is the difference between respectful, strong, mature, nuanced criticisms, and the inflammatory wailings of the Outrage Brigade…those already in a froth before they’ve bothered to read/watch/listen to the issues – ANY issues – at hand. They lash out in memes. They inflate every thought with hyperbole. They apparently have anointed themselves as some kind of mind-reading Idea Police. And any honest person who has ever used the internet knows they exist.

Are they the agents of good faith, charitable listening, genuine understanding, dialogue, problem-solving, building something better? I suspect not, because they throw gasoline upon every spark, pour salt on every wound, and usually take a flailing machete to the arenas for careful surgery.

What’s most interesting is to watch people protesting the claims of needless outrage with…needless outrage.

Harris deserves criticism and the rebuttals of better ideas. Anyone who declares that someone can’t appreciate his writings, activism, etc while also having points of disagreement is an acting demonstration of the very thing which makes online exchanges so maddening, so ugly, so unproductive.

It’s even worse. Much worse. He has decided that many of the people who criticize Dawkins, Harris, Boghossian, etc. are lunatics with flailing machetes. He has lost all sense of perspective. Look at that: while I was off taking deep breaths and restraining myself, he was busy anointing himself as some kind of mind-reading Idea Police, and decided to compose this respectful, strong, mature, nuanced criticism that doubles down on the Outrage Brigade, accuses them of inflammatory wailings and of throwing gasoline upon every spark, and engaging in needless outrage.

Well, fuck that. If you can live in Trump’s America and deny the existence of needful outrage, if you think that writing great science books makes your social commentary unimpeachable, if all it takes is being a philosophy professor to make your ideas about gender studies bulletproof, if you think writing books that demonize Muslims makes you an unquestionably great scholar, if you think you get to decide which ideas are less important and deserve to be insulated from a righteous anger which you are going to label “needless”, if you’re going to be outraged about divisiveness while declaring that people who criticize Dear Leader are the goats to be separated from the sheep, then hell yes I will tell you to go stuff yourself up your own reverent ass. I can’t help but notice who you choose to consider friends despite their terrible ideas and who you consider enemies of the movement because of their social justice ideas. It tells me what ideas you’re willing to support, and which you oppose.

And those ideas matter. The atheist movement, I’m told, is all about ideas — ideas that can change the world. But as is always the case, there are always more people who adapt to a movement, find themselves comfortable with it, and resist all efforts to change anything ever again. Unfortunately, we live in what can only be described as a dystopian society, and any complaining about change and upheaval and revolution will be seen as favoring the status quo.

A Very Smart Brotha wrote recently about this problem. Preach it, Damon Young.

Polite white people—specifically, polite white people who call for decorum instead of disruption when attempting to battle and defeat bias and hate—aren’t as paradoxical as tits on a bull. But they’re just as useless. They provide no value, they move no needles, they carry no weight (metaphysically and literally) and they ultimately just get in the way. They’re humanity’s tourists: the 54-mile-per-hour drivers in the left lane refusing to get the fuck out of the way so others can pass. And if you get enough of them in one place, they cause accidents.

Unfortunately, they’re every-fucking-where. They’re on Facebook threads and sitting behind you at work. They’re your neighbors and (sometimes) your family members. They’re Academy Award-nominated actresses on Twitter and college professors named “Mark Lilla” peddling terribly premised books about identity politics. Sometimes they ask for level heads, lest we become what we’re fighting against. Which is like saying, “Hey, don’t kill that fly, man, because you’re going to turn into a fly.” Sometimes they misquote MLK. Or Gandhi. Or Mother Teresa. Or Papa fucking Smurf. But you can always find them somewhere, attempting to defeat violence with the devil’s advocacy and danishes.

Of course, these are not bad people. At least not Martin Shkreli bad. They’re just so goddamn inert, and that inertia is dangerous. It’s unwise to mistake their lack of movement with futility. Because this type of idling does make a difference. Just the wrong kind of difference. It can be seductive and sublime. Who doesn’t want to believe that love bombs are enough to devastate hate? Who wouldn’t want to know that good manners win if the manners are good enough? Think about how much less stress battling white supremacy and police brutality would induce if all you needed to do to defeat it was drink a bottle of Pepsi.

Ultimately, this laser focus on niceness and decorum is just a way of policing behavior. Politeness in the face of violence, and terror is a privilege exclusive to them. They just don’t have as much to lose if everyone stays polite and kind and sober. If things happen to change while we’re nice as fuck to each other, great! If not, well, great, too. It’ll still be Wednesday. And bulls still won’t have tits.

They’re also YouTube atheists with “Atheist” in their nom-de-vlog who love engaging and making friends with regressive assholes while dismissing those who support social justice as the Outrage Brigade. If you aren’t outraged right now, you’re doing everything wrong.

It’s as bad as you might guess. It’s all about selective psychoanalyzing. We’re atheists because we have daddy issues.

There may be lots of reasons for atheism’s recent prevalence, but it is clear that the rise in atheism has taken place alongside the fall of the family. Is there a connection between the two? In his book Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism, psychologist Dr. Paul Vitz answers in the affirmative.

Specifically, Vitz argues that a father often exerts a powerful influence on his child’s concept of God. (Since his original book was published in 1999, other studies have provided support for this point.) Dr. Vitz takes a biographical tour of modern atheists and discovers a relatively consistent thread: “Looking back at our thirteen major historical rejecters of a personal God, we find a weak, dead, or abusive father in every case.” Of course, it is not true, nor is Vitz making the case, that every atheist had a bad father—or that the mere absence of a father must propel one to atheism. It would also be a fallacy to claim that each atheist’s fundamental reason for embracing atheism is his paternal relationship. But to Vitz’s point (and consistent with the findings of other studies), it is legitimate to argue that some persons may be predisposed to atheism because of their family circumstances.

So a guy who’s writing a book that has the thesis that fatherlessness is the basis of atheist psychology found seventeen atheists who had a weak, dead, or abusive father — in every case. All seventeen cases.

This analysis is just incompetent. I want to know what proportion of atheists had a problematic relationship with their father — I know for a fact that it is not all — and I also want to know what proportion of Catholics, and the general population, have poor paternal relationships. Citing a couple of cherry-picked anecdotal individuals is not data.

The backing off of the claim at the end of that paragraph is just weaseling. It’s probably true that some persons may be predisposed to atheism because of their family circumstances, but it’s a statement so vague and lacking in numbers that it is meaningless. I could just as well say that some Catholics may be predisposed to leave the faith because their priests are rapists — without data beyond some personal testimonies, however, it gaves us no insight into why people become atheists. Some because they were diddled by Father, but some is not a useful measure.

But he has another authority: the pope!

In his book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI makes an interesting point along the same lines, alluding to the connection between fatherhood and faith. Pointing out that the “Our Father” is a great prayer of consolation, insofar as it recognizes and professes God as our Father with Whom we have a personal relationship, Pope Benedict XVI notes that consolation is not experienced by everyone:

It is true, of course, that contemporary men and women have difficulty experiencing the great consolation of the word father immediately, since the experience of the father is in many cases either completely absent or is obscured by inadequate examples of fatherhood.”

As Pope Benedict suggests, the idea of God as a father can be a painful reminder that their own father did not, could not, or would not love them. Thus, the idea of spending fifteen minutes, much less eternity, with a “father” is remarkably unpleasant.

First, who cares what the Pope says? He has no particular qualifications or special insight into family psychology and sociology. Invoking an unmarried, childless celibate on family life has zero relevance.

Second, it is true that some people have crappy relationships with their fathers. It’s a problem in every religious denomination as well as among the godless. Again, we have a recitation of a non-statistical statistic.

Third, it is all kind of fucked-up to suggest that the invocation of an invisible intangible being in church is in any way similar to a real relationship with a real caring father. It suggests that real fathers are an incomprehensible enigma to these Catholics.

Fourthly, a counter-example (since all they have is vague unsourced anecdotes, that’s fair): me. I had a great relationship with my father. I trusted him, he was reliable, he was dedicated to his family, we respected and loved him. His death was a painful loss, and I think of him about every day.

I cared enough for him that I’ll make the Catholics a deal. If you could give me those 15 more minutes with my dead father (my real father, not your imaginary psychopath), I’ll convert to Catholicism in a flash. It would be worth it.

But one thing I’m certain about: you can’t do that. All you can do is lie and make false promises.

There he goes again, picking on the distinguished and august Thought Leaders of Atheism, in this case Sam Harris. It’s easy to do; there are a lot of buzzwords that trigger my rage, and Harris is fond of trotting out indicators of inanity like “identity politics” and “politically correct” and, of course, “divisive”.

…why is “divisive” a bad thing? Can you name a single example of progress in our society or any other that was not “divisive”? The push to end slavery was divisive, so much so that it sparked a civil war in which hundreds of thousands died; does that mean we should not have pushed to end slavery? The fight for women’s suffrage was divisive. The fight to end segregation was divisive. The fight for LGBT equality is divisive. Every single movement that resulted in a more fair, just and equal society was divisive. So why do people make such an accusation, as if it was somehow a strike against movements for social progress rather than a point in their favor? This is just lazy, sloppy thinking, and once again the use of buzzwords in place of serious argument.

That last sentence encapsulates Harris neatly.

You knew this was coming, the perfect example of raging capitalism: old people buying young people’s blood.

In Monterey, California, a new startup has emerged, offering transfusions of human plasma: 1.5 litres a time, pumped in across two days, harvested uniquely from young adults.

Ambrosia, the vampiric startup concerned, is run by a 32-year-old doctor called Jesse Karmazin, who bills $8,000 (£6,200) a pop for participation in what he has dubbed a “study”. So far, he has 600 clients, with a median age of 60. The blood is collected from local blood banks, then separated and combined – it takes multiple donors to make one package.

Let’s consider all the ways this is sleazy.

• Karmazin isn’t paying the donors in proportion to the value of their blood; a unit of blood is worth a few hundred dollars, and he’s just buying it up from blood banks and repackaging it with a significant markup.

• If he were paying what it was worth to him to donors, he’d be enticing donors to contribute to him for a pointless exercise in imaginary rejuvenation, rather than to blood banks/hospitals for saving lives.

• Right now he’s depleting the local blood supply by a small amount for his venality.

• He’s lying and calling it a “study”. There are no control groups. Participants have to buy in with large sums of money, so he’s selecting for only the rich.

• There is no good evidence that this is an effective and significant treatment for aging. There is some work in mice, but it’s so preliminary that there’s no way to justify leaping into human trials.

• Imagine that there are solid, measurable improvements in the recipients’ health. I don’t believe in getting something for nothing; then I would have to ask what are the detriments to the donor’s health of giving blood. Are there long term losses? Short term effects? This ‘study’ is ignoring that side of the issue.

Bad science, weak justifications, and wealthy exploiters literally feeding on the blood of the young, like a swarm of geeky overpaid ticks. They are actual vampires. They should think about that, because there is a universally known literary precedent for how one deals with vampires.

I do think that research into, for instance, stem cell replenishment is a good idea — but let’s not pretend that what this guy is doing is serious research. And if these transfusions do have some beneficial effects, it’s time to have some serious consideration of the ethics of such treatments, and their wider effect on society — two things that venture capitalists and vampires don’t know much about, and don’t care about.

A couple have a major disagreement. A metaphorical story.

Spouse #1: I want a divorce.

Spouse #2: But no! You can’t! Marriage is so, so important, and we have to stick together no matter what!

S#1: I’m a feminist, and you put a pic of Milo Yiannopoulis with a word ballon saying “Feminism is Cancer” as the background on your cell phone.

S#2: You can change! Or you can learn to tolerate my little quirks. I have to be me, you know.

S#1: You marched in a white nationalist parade!

S#2: Oh, you and your trivial, petty concerns. Our bond is more important. We have to stick together, for the sake of the marriage. We still have things in common: you think Black Lives Matter, but we can still agree that cops have really tough jobs. Why are you tearing us apart?

I ask, who’s side do you take here? Some of you will say that both sides are talking past each other, and that is correct. Some might then follow through and declare that therefore Both Sides Are Wrong, glossing over the misogyny and racism that one side takes for granted.

But some of us say instead, “Oh no, Spouse #1! Get out! #2 is an asshole with bad ideas!” It seems to me the only rational response: that’s a marriage that needs to end.

But a lot of atheists disagree. At least, that’s what I have to conclude from the last 6 years of abusive behavior by atheists against atheists, who then try to silence disagreement by declaring the inviolable importance of sticking together in the name of the precious Atheist Movement.

In 2016, David Smalley asked, What’s killing the atheist movement?”. His answer: public disagreement about social justice. Reading between the lines, it was clear that it was all the fault of people who criticized other people within the movement. We’re supposed to be quiet, show a unified front, and call each other up on the phone before we dare to disagree publicly. He was completely oblivious to the fact that silence favors the status quo, and that he was taking a side when he demands obedience to the nebulous leadership of the atheist movement.

I slammed him on it. I had a debate with him on his rather obnoxious and ignorant post; you can’t listen to it anymore because it was deleted by its creator. There is still my side of the conclusion, though.

Did he learn anything from this? No. Earlier this summer in 2017, he wrote another post that is nearly exactly the same as the previous, except that now he boldly states who the villain is: How the Regressive Left Is Killing the Atheist Movement. I hadn’t read it before, because I’ve written off any interest in anything Smalley has to say, but it’s an amazing piece of work: he starts by explaining that this is a result of a series of conversations he’s had with people like Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, Adam Carolla, Pete Boghossian, and Lawrence Krauss.

Wow. What a diverse collection of dissenting voices. Were Sam Harris and Dave Rubin busy that day? They are the only people I can think of who might have improved on that stellar collection of manifold heterogeneity.

Actually, it’s a collection of bogus conservative atheist bullshit. It’s got everything. Witch hunts. The horseshoe theory. Insistence that he’s the reasonable one. Misrepresentation of everyone else. It’s one long atheist dudebro cliche. All the problems in his first post were exponentially amplified.

It’s not just me. The Thomas Smith at the Serious Inquiries Only blog reamed him out. Which is good, because now I don’t have to address it.

But that’s not all. Smalley then made his garbage post the subject of his talk at Gateway To Reason. Watch, if you can bear it.

Most disappointingly, it was posted by Seth Andrews, who I thought was fairly level-headed. He prefixed it with this message:

At the 2017 Gateway to Reason Conference in St. Louis, David Smalley (host of Dogma Debate) gave his perspective on the challenges and often public divisions among atheist activists, and in regard to online interactions as a whole.

It’s a perspective…uploaded and presented here as a conversation starter, as so many are fervently seeking a fairer, more tempered, and more civil exchanges and interactions between people

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” – Harper Lee

Fairer. More tempered. More civil. Applied to a speech in which Smalley trivializes our differences and begs people to stop criticizing fellow atheists. In which he sets up all kinds of irrational dichotomies. That thing in my imaginary dialog where Spouse #2 suggests that pointing out, as Black Lives Matter does, that cops are murdering people is reasonably countered by pointing out that we can still agree that cops have really tough jobs? He actually says that.

People at that conference applauded and cheered and laughed. Except, I noticed, Alix Jules and a few others scattered around the room. An amazing number of atheists thought that deplorable performance was commendable, including Seth Andrews. My estimation of Andrews has dropped significantly now.

The video already has a large number of positive comments! I’ll give you one example, representative of the kind of atheist who agrees with Smalley.

The skeptic-atheist community broke apart when Cultural Marxism was introduced into it e.g. third wave feminism, identity politics, intersectionality. New rules for behavior and speech were introduced. This ideology even demonised the most prominent and influential atheists like Dakwins or Harris as bigoted, racist, islamophobic white males.
As a counter movement, many skeptics became fiercely anti-SJW. There the division took place.

The “Cultural Marxist” remark gives it away. This is one of those pseudoscientifically racist people who whines about white genocide. That’s the audience for Smalley’s message. He doesn’t care.

Stephanie Zvan was there at the talk. She didn’t like it.

So what the hell did Smalley do in his talk? Start with what he didn’t do: He didn’t address a single one of Thomas Smith’s criticisms. He didn’t modify his thesis, and he didn’t change his examples. The Black Lives Matter/cops have tough jobs was in the talk just as it was in the post—worded differently, but still missing the point Smith notes. He didn’t actually call out the “Regressive Left” specifically, but that’s where his examples of bad behavior came from.

You see, we’re throwing people away in this movement for not being pure and perfect. We’re excommunicating imperfect people willy-nilly, and people are leaving atheism because it reminds them of their old churches that did this. Because, you know, people didn’t actually leave their churches over the god question, despite this being the basis for the atheist movement’s claim to any kind of broad rationality. No, they left because people were mean to each other. Petty mean.

What does he mean? He means holding people to account for things like retweeting white nationalists when those white nationalists make a point someone agrees with. Or at least that’s the part of the situation he mentioned. He left out the content of any retweets in the movement that might fit his description and didn’t talk about any hypothetical tweeter’s response to being criticized for making the error.

Yes. Objecting to racism is now “being mean” to some in the movement. We’re excommunicating people over mere sexism and racism! Not mentioned is that somehow the people being “excommunicated” are people at the top, like Dawkins and Harris, who haven’t gone anywhere, who are still lauded as the leading voices of the movement, who still get speaking gigs at atheist conferences, who are still turned to when the media needs a quote from an atheist.

Steve Shives points out exactly where this split in the community occurred. One flashpoint where the differences crystallized: Rebecca Watson and Elevatorgate. You remember that — when Watson, in response to a late-night suggestion in an elevator said “Guys, don’t do that”, and an angry horde of entitled assholes shrieked and sent rape threats, and an even larger group of atheists looked at the years of harassment and the quiet one-liner with David Smalley’s attitude and declared that both sides were equivalent and bad.

This is what is making the atheist movement irrelevant and ugly: that there are people who close their eyes to injustice, like David Smalley, and others who exploit that to turn the whole thing into foul nest of entitled asshats who prop up the status quo. Where once we were a radical force for a new perspective on humanity, now it’s a home for white nationalism and casual sexism and the same old dogmas, because too many of its advocates consider equality and human dignity trivial, petty concerns not worth calling out members for. It’s populated with people who cannot recognize the distinction between racism and criticizing racism. (You know who else, besides David Smalley, cannot do that? Donald Trump.)

Atheism has squandered its momentum on a defensive old guard and apologists for neglect of events happening in our world. I’m going to have to suggest that we all abandon it. Let’s find an organization that openly states that they want to dismantle the structures of white supremacy and sexist oppression.

Take a listen to James Croft. Humanism is a better future.

A couple of years ago, someone put together a compilation titled “Best of PZ Myers Amazing Arguments And Clever Comebacks”, and I missed it! O, my ego! It just grew two sizes larger!

Oh, wait. It’s on YouTube. I just read the comments.

• Pz myers is a douchebag SJW.

• maybe avoid this guy in the future, he’s a twat!

• PZ is an idiot and an asshole.

• SJW morons will be SJW morons. Myers is one disgusting primate.

• I’m sorry, but PZ is a douche.

• PZ Myers gives a bad name to atheists…just so you guys know, he hurls rape accusations at fellow atheists when they disagree about feminism…

• This guy is a total moron trying to look like an intellectual.

• fuck PZ. shes a weak ass bitch.

Momentarily nonplussed…but then I realized these are comments on YouTube, and my ego inflated another two sizes.

Nate has an interminable web site in which he talks about how unique and special and hardworking he is, and how he abhors 95% of what other people like (it’s a kind of negging), and how he wants to meet a special someone for a vacation date. Maybe magic will happen!

I think “magic” is his special secret word for sex.

Anyway, after going on and on about his unusual creative lifestyle and how he’s sure there are very few women who could possibly be interested in him, he lays down his requirements for a date:

As far as age is concerned, if you are somewhere between 22 and 35 that’s just fine. If you have a slender, healthy body, a reasonably slim waist, and a very pretty face then, quite frankly, you sound like heaven to me!

How prosaic and predictable. Just another marketing guy trying to pick up girls.

By the way, it’s even worse than that: he markets nutritional supplements, the shiny new ploy for snake oil salesmen, and he hates the FDA because it is an inept, deplorable, and useless organization.

I think those are his special secret words for “knows I’m a con artist and a quack”.

Eric Hovind has been working on (and raising money for) a movie called Genesis: Part 1: Paradise Lost: 3D or something like that. It’s supposedly a 3D animated retelling of the Christian creation myth, as interpreted by modern apologists. Hovind is constantly pumping it up as a big time real movie release.

Only…Paulogia does an interesting analysis of the expenses and what has been said about it over there in Hovindland, and it sounds like it won’t be a genuine movie distribution deal — it’s more of a one-shot promotion involving theater rentals and bused in crowds of churchgoers. It’s the usual. Just as they pretend to be scientists, they pretend to do movie production.

They should try to book the Morris Theater for their one-night release. I know there are a lot of believers in this town who’d attend, and at least one skeptic. I’d also mention it to my students and encourage them to show up and think critically, so I’d probably manage to drum up a few more for their attendance figures. Here’s the theater contact info, Eric! Make it happen!

Richard Dawkins used his recently much calmer Twitter account to snipe at something he doesn’t seem to understand.

All humanity should be proud of Newton & the precision of eclipse forecasting (oh but surely an eclipse is only a social construct?) pic.twitter.com/Opz95OIxnw

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 21, 2017

All humanity should be proud of Newton & the precision of eclipse forecasting (oh but surely an eclipse is only a social construct?)

The first part is true. We can predict these things thousands of years in advance; yesterday’s eclipse was announced years ahead of time, maps were produced that told everyone precisely when and where it would be visible, and presto, they were correct, as everyone rightly expected! There are brute facts about the relative movements of 3 astronomical bodies that can be calculated with impressive precision.

But why the snide remark about a “social construct”? The eclipse was also a social construct! We attach a value to witnessing these events, and also to conversing about them to our friends and families, and on social media. People felt awe when the sun was obscured by the moon. They wrote about it, they took pictures. They traveled long distances to witness it, and felt the effort was worth it. Some of us didn’t bother, because what we individually value is also a social construct. Eclipses would continue to happen if humanity managed to eradicate itself; the shadow will continue to move across a planet of smoke and ash and crumbling skeletons, but this other cultural dimension will have vanished, and we wouldn’t have science communicators feeling proud of their accomplishments, they wouldn’t be explaining how it occurs, and we wouldn’t be telling their children about it.

Did you know we can trace the path of totality by mapping the traffic jams afterwards? Newton did not forecast that. He couldn’t, despite the fact that traffic patterns are also a brute material fact. Because it was a consequence of the social construct built around the eclipse.

It was also weird to see that put-down of the importance of social structures in interpreting astronomical events because just a few hours earlier, he wrote this:

“Listening to the eclipse” https://t.co/8GMJXeTErS I journeyed to Austria for 1999 eclipse. There was a moving wave of human yells & whoops

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 21, 2017

“Listening to the eclipse” http://bit.ly/2vh3u51 I journeyed to Austria for 1999 eclipse. There was a moving wave of human yells & whoops

What? Why did he travel all the way to Austria to watch a highly predictable shadow? Why did the humans in attendance yell and whoop, when all that happened is that it got dark for a few minutes? Stay home. Run an astronomy simulation and get the numbers and parameters. The rest is only a social construct.

Scientism is also a social construct, by the way.