If you’re looking for a calm conversation about the latest split in the atheist community (don’t ask, it doesn’t matter), here’s Thomas Smith, Kevin Logan, and Kristi Winters talking about it. I just wanted to pull out one YouTube comment that makes me see red — it’s the same attitude that I think is one of the major contributors to the poisoning of the movement, and one I’ve addressed before.

Atheism is a singular answer to a singular question.
The answer is “No”.
The Question, “Is there a god?”
Nothing else should be attached to this definition, by either the right or the left.

So…atheism is a dogma, I guess. There is one question and one answer, and then you’re done. Makes it easy.

I would just ask, how did you arrive at your answer? Is it built on any philosophical foundation at all?

And then I would ask, how does that answer inform your views on everything else? Or does it?

Those are the interesting and important questions, and the answer to those matter. “No” is just an empty negation in a vacuum and is spectacularly stupid and uninteresting.

There’s something funny going on down in Alabama, at Kent Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land. It’s getting a bit cult-like, with Hovind constructing various buildings with money of murky provenance, and whole families coming down to camp out on the grounds and attend the little repetitive indoctrination seminars he records and puts on his YouTube channel. He’s also up to his old con man tricks. It’s difficult to piece together because all we’ve got to go on are accounts from the kind of people who fall for Hovind’s line of patter and subsequently see through it all and get out. Like Mary Tocco, his second wife, for instance.

Kent is intelligent, charming, humorous and talented. I cannot deny that I fell in love with Kent and his ministry whole-heartedly and believed that he was the man that of God I was preparing my life for. I did not date him while he was married and I never spoke with him while he was in prison as some people have alleged. We saw each other professionally for the first time when I went to Pensacola, Florida in April of 2016 for the purpose of using Kent’s videography resources to produce an educational video on my own area of research that happens to be a cause that Kent supports. At that time I knew nothing about Kent’s personal or family life.

That’s reality — I might find Kent Hovind repulsive, but there are plenty of people who like the guy, like his message, and like him so much that they send him money…or marry him. Well, sort of: knowing Kent’s anti-government beliefs, they didn’t get a marriage certificate, but were married on the basis of Kent’s authority.

The honeymoon didn’t last, though, and Tocco left him because he was scheming and scamming and dodging tax law, and she didn’t want to end up like his first wife, sent to prison for being an accomplice.

Finally, I requested the opportunity to address these concerns in a meeting with Kent and the trustee of the DAL board. I had learned enough to be able to ask specific questions about how the business was being conducted. Much to my dismay, their side of the discussion was a terribly disappointment, and more accurately appalling. I shook my head in disbelief as I heard statements repeatedly such as, “well, that’s a gray area” and “I think we could explain it this way to defend ourselves, if we had to in court”. I was told to forget my concerns because they would likely be civil issues anyway, not criminal. It was one of the most unacceptable discussions I have ever witnessed, especially given the past of the men speaking.

Yeah, he’s playing games with his taxes again. Fortunately for Tocco, she got out.

Kent removed his wedding band three months later. In November 2017, he renounced his marriage to me and informed me he was looking for a new wife. He is now married to his third wife, Cindi Lincoln, who was previously my friend when I lived in Alabama.

That is so telling. To Hovind, marriage isn’t a mutual contract, it’s something he can decree or renounce one-sidedly. Read any of the accounts by the people who have escaped his orbit, and it’s non-stop alarm bells.

Then there’s his association with a convicted pedophile. This is where it gets tangled, and the story suffers because, goddamn, none of these people know how to put together a clear journalistic narrative. So there are these patchwork scrapbookings of assembled Facebook posts that are really hard to read, and rambling videos by unhappy ex-followers. To boil it down a bit, Kent Hovind has a mutually loyal relationship with a guy named Chris Jones, the convicted pedophile. There are excerpts in which he baldly states that sure, he’s a convicted pedophile, but he was convicted by the same system that found him, Kent Hovind, guilty of tax dodging, so it’s all a lie. Besides, he’s down there at Dinosaur Adventure Land all the time, helping out with the work of running the place, helping the families who come down, playing with all the kids they’ve got frolicking about…

What did I tell you? Alarm bells. Great shrieking sirens.

If you don’t believe me, a liberal radical college professor, here’s a good ol’ truck-drivin’ Southern boy, a man who was briefly under Hovind’s spell and then saw the light.

I didn’t think I would be back over here talking about Kent Hovind on this channel but it’s where my platform is so that’s where I’m at. But some authorities definitely need to start stepping up their investigations of this so-called christian organization. It is nothing less than a cult at this point. What other “theme park” is building churches in the middle of their conpound. Dinosaur Adventure Land definitely needs child protective services over watching them. From accusations of child abduction to a child drowning and now a child that nobody knows of his whereabouts…..or at least nobody has been informed even people have asked…..and this child was traveling alone with a convicted child m0lester.

Now I might just be some dumb truck driver but at the same time I do know how to put two and two together and see that there is a lot of fishiness going on. Numerous people have come out stating how unsafe Kent Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land is.

After this last year with Kent Hovind openly and publicly stating that he has an open invitation for Chris(the convicted child abuser) to come at anytime to DAL…… I do not understand how any parent in their right mind would have their kids there.

But certainly if these accusations are true about this boy and Chris then the authorities obviously need to get involved as well as answers from Kent and anyone else involved in any sort of cover-up.

And of course you would have people out there asking why Kent Hovind would have anything to answer for when it’s only his friend….. quite simply due to him openly inviting him to a place that Kent himself admits is intended for children and Kent knows his criminal history makes him culpable for anything that happens.

There’s a lot I’ve skipped over, like the child who drowned, and the missing child, and who knows what else.

There is definitely a lot of fishy stuff going on in Alabama, and it needs exposure. Any journalists want to take it on? Or shall we wait until something truly tragic and sordid and scandalous happens, and the True Crime authors can take over?

The Serpent Mound in Ohio is an amazing artifact of a past culture — earthworks over 400m long in the shape of a snake.

You can imagine how the European colonizers of the area regarded this immense communal work of architecture…or don’t imagine, just see what a mess they made of the story.

“Unfortunately the Serpent Mound has become the epicenter of efforts to appropriate sacred American Indian sites and replace the Indigenous story with all sorts of fantastic, absurd stories,” said during his solstice presentation.

“Let’s be absolutely clear. At the heart of these myths and fantastic stories is the racist notion that American Indians were too stupid to have built something so wonderful,” he added.

Right. There’s Graham Hancock, of course, babbling about “The Ancients” and a world-spanning civilization of New Age stargazers, or various people on the History Channel claiming that it’s evidence of a race of giants, because, after all, American Indians were too short to build large structures, so there had to be a population of 9 or 10 foot tall giants to build these mounds. It’s disrespectful and nonsensical.

In recent years, activities at the mound have taken on the quality of what Barnes describes as a minstrel show disrespecting and appropriating Native cultures.

Since the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the mound has become a mecca for followers of New Age spirituality. The idea of the Convergence was created by author and art historian Jose Arguelles who claimed August 16-17, 1987, were significant dates in the Maya calendar and represented an especially auspicious time to meditate for global peace.

Some New Age activities such as digging and burying items in the mound, forwarding information purporting that the effigy was built by aliens from space or prehistoric giants and misrepresenting Native connections to the site has been of growing concern to tribal leaders like Wallace and Barnes. Of even greater concern was the way that past managers of the Serpent Mound site often turned a blind eye to these activities, sometimes allowing such practitioners to manage and stage events at the mound. This sent a message to the public that these wild theories were part of the official history of the site according to Wallace and Barnes.

It was supposed to be a kind of cosmic bomb shelter for people at the end of the world predicted by the Mayan calendar to occur in 2012, for instance. You may have noticed we didn’t achieve world peace in 1987, and the world is still here in 2021, and that whole Mayan calendar thing was nothing more than the end of a calendar cycle. That reminds me — I’ll have to get a new calendar in January. Either that, or the world is ending at midnight on 31 December. Hey, what do the Maya have to do with the native people of Ohio, anyway?

Jason Colavito has a thorough dissection of the absurdist pseudo-history of Serpent Mound. Would you believe that some claim it is a cathedral for a global penis-worshipping cult? Of course you would. There are loonies everywhere, and they tend to get rewarded with a “documentary” series on the History Channel.

The summer solstice was just this past weekend, so I took a look at the calendar of events for Serpent Mound. There was some good stuff about the history of the area and the archaeology of the mound, but also…Bigfoot? Nephilim? New Age quacks peddling crystals and herbs? Whoever runs this event has no integrity at all and willfully misrepresents the truth to make a buck.

The good news though, is that at least this time the organizers invited some of the descendants of the people who actually built the mound to come speak. That’s a little progress.

The Shawnee tribe returned home to the Serpent Mound on the longest day of the year.

The Summer Solstice, June 20, the longest day of the year, marks the first time that the Shawnee tribe has officially returned to the Serpent Mound located in Ohio to present their history and connection to this place that they called home so many years ago.

Although it was certainly ancestors of the Shawnee people who built the magnificent serpent shaped mound, the largest earthwork effigy in the world, Ohio failed to involve the tribe in conveying its meaning to the public until now.

Glenna Wallace, chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and Ben Barnes, chief of the Shawnee Tribe, also located in Oklahoma, spent the weekend telling visitors to the Serpent Mound historical site about their peoples’ and ancestors’ connection to Ohio and the mound.

I also like the title of the article: “Shawnee reclaim the great Serpent Mound: Ancestors of Native Americans, not prehistoric giants or space aliens, built the mound in Ohio”. The white people who run the solstice event ought to be embarrassed that they had to invite Indians, who had been dispossessed from the land and treated as primitives who couldn’t have built the structure, to come back and tell them the simple truth.

I’ve been in a few. I hate ’em. Here’s how they work: the ID proponent declares that the thesis of the debate is “Everything is Designed” and launches into his argument:

Cars are designed by intelligent agents. Shoes are designed. Computers are designed. iPhones are designed. My right hand is designed. Therefore, everything is designed.

The scientist who got suckered into this engagement begins to unlimber their long list of counter-examples. “We have natural mechanisms that generate complex forms without the need for a designer…wait, did you say your right hand is designed?”

Sure. It’s made of cells, and cells are designed, so of course it’s the product of design.

“You can’t just declare that everything you don’t understand is designed. That’s the whole point of contention here; you have to address the evidence for your position, not just announce by fiat that everything is designed.”

I’m ready to discuss all of the evidence.

“OK, I begin again. So Tiktaalik…”

Designed. Clearly designed.

“The entire fossil series illustrating tetrapod evolution…?”

Designed.

“The citrate metabolic pathway?”

Designed.

“Cells are…”

Great example. Cells are complicated, with lots of fiddly bits, therefore implying a Fiddler. Shall I throw some big numbers at you to show you how complicated cells are?

“No, that’s OK. I know how complex cells are. You don’t get to simply decide that all complex things have to be designed. Again, that’s what we’re debating! If I show you something of unknown origin, or even something with a well-documented history of natural evolutionary history, you don’t get to just greedily snatch it up and put it in the “Designed” category!”

Yes, I do. The burden of proof is on you, and I can refute everything you propose by pointing out any one thing that could have been designed, and that is sufficient to make it designed.

“By a mysterious invisible intelligence that operated for billions of years before the origin of intelligent life on Earth.”

Now you’re getting it! By the way, welcome to my proof for the existence of my God.

I bring this up because I listened to another Intelligent Design debate, this time between James Croft and the reliably ridiculous Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute. It was interesting because I’d be one of those guys who brings a catalog of biological counter-examples to the debate; as a philosopher, Croft ignores all that and drills right down to the logic of the argument the creationists are making. I think that’s a smart approach, even if Meyer is only capable of a different flavor of evasion.

I’ve queued it up below at the start of James’ argument, because all the politeness and niceness in the introduction turned my stomach.

He starts by summarizing Meyer’s position:

Note: Meyer has turned that simple statement into three long-winded, tedious books now. If you can grasp that simple summary, there’s no reason to read any of his books, since they don’t provide any further evidence for his position.

Point 1 is false. Meyer exercises a kind of studied neglect of the actual state of the evidence in biology that allows him to pretend there aren’t any adequate explanations for evolutionary phenomena. Croft focuses on the link between 1 and 2, that Meyer is making an abductive argument while failing to support his primary premises. He points out three problems with the logic of Meyer’s claims which I won’t get into — watch the video. It’s not as painful as it looks: Croft begins at the 14 minute mark, and wraps up at 25 minutes, so the interesting part is only 11 minutes long. The rest is Meyer making noises with his mouth and frequently interrupting Croft, and then there’s the interminable period of the two of them telling each other how nice they are and what a worthy and interesting this conversation was. That bit was aggravating: Meyer is his usual pompous self, pretending that Croft’s annoyingly congenial, smiling manner was an affirmation that there was something of substance to his pretentious bullshit, completely oblivious to the fact that the cheerful fellow with the British accent has effectively torpedoed him below the waterline. He is unconcerned; he’s just going to sail off and write another tendentious, wordy tome repeating his 3 points over and over again.

Sheesh. You have one conversation with one of these slimy wankers, and they never let it go. I’ve been getting harangued constantly by this fanatic, Nadir, who is now sending me ultimatums.

retract your statement before it is too late

Hi PZ –
A major Islamic channel has asked me to
document your flip-flop, under the spotlight
of investigation, you answered in the negative
to the question of scientific errors in the Quran.
We have it ALL ON TAPE. Only upon knowing
about the Islamic promotion, you flip flopped.
This latest statement was NOT motivated by
the objective pursuit of science, but rather polemics.

Regarding your NEW scientific error claim:

The Quran does NOT state that embryos were poofed into existence
with bones and flesh fully formed. If you think that anyone is going to
go for this, you are sadly mistaken. This is nothing more than a dishonest
malicious and nefarious interpretation being imposed upon the text. And you will be exposed.

IF you think, there is any fool out there who will buy into this, you are mistaken.

Retract this statement by this afternoon on your blog.

Ooooh. A major Islamic channel is going to talk about me.

I did not “flip flop” on anything, nor was I under any illusions that I was not talking to a group of Islamists. It was rather obvious. They were not undercover, and were quite open about their perspective.

What he thinks is a new scientific error claim was merely recognition of their own post hoc rationalizations. One group of Muslims is telling me that there’s a clear sequential progression in development, with bones first, then muscles, and then when I point out that isn’t true, they try to tell me they’re formed at the same time, even though the text in the Quran states a sequence.

I really don’t care. It’s two fucking sentences in a holy book. Don’t try to tell me there’s some deep insight into embryology there; it’s a couple of broad guesses by people who didn’t have microscopes or any knowledge of even cell theory, so I’m going to reject any suggestion that it’s scientifically accurate.

I’m trying to pretend I didn’t.

The ol’ Firebrand Atheist is now reduced to antivaxxer/conspiracy theory apologetics.

Now that we’ve paid off our share of our legal debt, I’m getting all these questions about why we didn’t press on for Richard Carrier to pay our legal costs, or for damages, or for punishment. Let me give you the reasons all in one place.

• Just shutting down his SLAPP suit cost us a quarter million dollars and three years. Going after more would probably take another quarter million that we wouldn’t get back until the suit was over, and then only if we succeeded. The legal system is a gamble.

• Even if we did win, we’d already been through discovery, and we knew what Richard Carrier was worth: diddly-squat. 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’s poor. He makes a bit more than he would if he were working for minimum wage. We’d be squeezing blood from a stone.

• What about teaching him a lesson? You know he wouldn’t. He has nothing to lose, so slapping him hard with a financial punishment wouldn’t cost him much. He doesn’t have an academic reputation, so we wouldn’t be affecting that. He does have a favorable reputation with the right-wing grievance squad, and he’s been milking that for a while now — punitive damages would make him even more of a hero to them.

• What about just shutting him up? No, that would put us on his level. Remember, the whole point of his SLAPP suit — Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation — was entirely to silence us. If he’d succeeded, a $2.1 million judgement would have shut down Freethoughtblogs, the Orbit, and Skepticon, and would have reduced the named individuals in his suit to penury (we aren’t rich, either). We’d rather deal with bad speech with more good speech, which is why an important part of the final settlement was his total capitulation and the absence of any gag order. We can talk about what an asshole Richard Carrier is all we want!

  Ironically, Carrier was supported in his suit by a lot of Free Speech Warriors.

• We just wanted it over so we could get back to our ordinary lives. Wasting a couple more years on the courts would be a distraction and deprive us of valuable time that could be better spent…chasing spiders, for instance.

• It’s enough that his own legal shenanigans have now 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.