You wanna watch a train wreck? Probably not, so I’ll summarize this video down below. The interviewer, on the left, is someone named David Worley (sorry, never heard of him before), and on the right is Lance Gregorchuk, one of the organizers of that silly anti-theism conference to be held in Brighton. Warning: Gregorchuk seems to be unable to complete a thought, or even a full sentence. The squirrels are running races in his cranium.

OK. To summarize the chaos, in the first half of the video, Gregorchuk seems to be trying to persuade Worley to attend his conference, but doing so by negging him, telling him he’s run-of-the-mill, that he’s failed to ask any hard questions in the interview. What he wants is for Worley to come to the event and have every speaker come to him for an interview afterwards with hard, challenging questions. He says he would love someone to challenge their thinking, and to challenge Dawkins or Krauss. He gives an example of a hard question to ask Dawkins: “Why are you an atheist?”

Jesus. That’s a softball. Dawkins has written whole books on that; do you think he’s going to be stunned by such a difficult question? Gregorchuk is clueless and naive. It’s painful to watch.

But not as cringeworthy as the last half! Worley finally gets a word in edgewise, and gives an example of a question he would ask, and it’s a good one: “Is it right to platform Lawrence Krauss given the sexual assault allegations?”

Whoa, Gregorchuk is thrown for a loop. He becomes even more incoherent as he tries to justify his answer, which is Absolutely!

I can’t possibly transcribe his words. It’s a collection of sentence fragments, stammered out without much connection between them. I’m just going to give you an incomplete collection of his confident excuses.

Absolutely. You never got wrong signals from a girl and you touched her? I did it, you did it.

They could have nailed you, me, anyone else.

We don’t get signals from women.

You’re out with a girl. I’m out with a girl. She’s nice, she’s flirting her hair, how do you do this?

It’s like hand on the knee, hand on the … come on man, I’m not justifying anything, I’m just being honest.

I’m thinking of the 80s, I probably put my hand on a few…

The 80s, 90s were a time when we weren’t very…

It was a different time. It wasn’t correct…but Joe Biden used to put people’s arm on other people’s hands whatever, it’s OK.

Wow. That conference is going to be a gathering of yammering shitgibbons, isn’t it?

Allow me to answer from my experience as a man. Women are sending out signals all the time, but you have to listen to hear them. They are most definitely not sending the signal “Please lunge for my breasts” or “Stick your hand up under my skirt”, and if you think that’s what you’re waiting for, you’re going to be frustrated. Maybe you should try talking with them, listen to what they have to say, and at professional and provisionally intellectual events in particular, consider that they are people who have not come out of an urge to gratify random men’s sexual urges.

Women were not welcoming breast-lunges in the 1980s. In fact, they never appreciated those in all of human history. It’s never been that different time, except in the minds of men who had the power and the will to execute it thoughtlessly, but even those cases, the recipient of that careless brutality wasn’t appreciating it.

As for “how do you do this”, I started dating my wife in the mid-70s. The initial overture did not involve my hand creeping up her thigh — I asked her out to a dance. I was a bad dancer. We mainly talked. We got along and enjoyed each others company. We went on more dates — initially, we double-dated and went to churches, which is safe ground for a young woman in the company of a man who, in Gregorchuk’s head, might start randomly grabbing things. We went for walks, we went out for pizza, we had long phone calls, we got to know and trust each other as people and friends first.

We kissed (and I asked if I could first) after 3 months of weekly dating. I know, it doesn’t reward you with quick sexual gratification, if that’s what you’re after, but if you really want to know someone as a human being, talking works. Start there. We humans evolved to have some very sophisticated and subtle means of communicating information-rich signals, and women are just as good at it as men. Try it! There’s something wrong with you if you think women don’t send signals or are sending confusing signals.

Also, an atheist conference isn’t an 80s disco, usually. People don’t usually go there to hook up, they’re there to learn and share ideas and be inspired. I do not recommend that women attend the anti-theism international conference, since it’s going to be full of strange awkward men peering you at you looking for the “please fondle me” signal, and if you don’t give it, they might intentionally misinterpret your “please stop staring at me” signal. Or they’ll only hear the first word of your “Fuck off!” signal.

By the way, Gregorchuk is listed on the conference home page as the “marketer of the event”. He is quite possibly the worst communicator I’ve ever witnessed with a lead role in an organization.

I have plans for today. I don’t have labs to teach this week because of the looming holiday, and I don’t have to prep for class this morning since I’m giving an exam, so I’m delightfully free, mostly. I am sitting down with students all afternoon to coach them through writing a good lab report, so I do have some obligations.

But this morning is all spider time. I’ve got feeding to do and a swarm of spiderlings to sort out. I don’t know why they don’t pay me to do this 8 hours a day, I’ve got a lot to learn.

Then, this evening, I’m setting aside some time to watch We Believe in Dinosaurs, about the construction of Ken Ham’s Ark Park.

We Believe in Dinosaurs follows the design and construction of a massive $120 million Noah’s Ark replica in rural Kentucky, telling the story of the unsettling and uniquely American conflict between science and religion.

Maybe I’ll do some live-blogging as I watch it. I should probably set aside a few hours afterwards for seething time, too.

Hey! I forgot to mention! You know, that Anti-Theism International Convention that is handing out the most prestigious Awards in the Atheist Community is also having an auction.

If you attend, you can bid on a beautiful painting of Christopher Hitchens.

Not the photo to the right. A painting kind of like that that doesn’t exist. Yet.

They are now taking offers to paint it. Don’t worry, they’ll pay you! The offer even includes free admission to the conference.

I guess they’re appealing to the kinds of people who want a fancy painting, any painting, of Christopher Hitchens on their wall, and they think advertising the potential existence of such an object will be a draw for their event.

It’s two things I really detest: atheist idolatry and selling vapor. We might as well be Catholics.

You know what it is.

pareidolia
[ˌperēˈdōlēə]
NOUN
the perception of apparently significant patterns or recognizable images, especially faces, in random or accidental arrangements of shapes and lines.
“there could be a mysterious stone coffin on Mars, or, more likely, it’s just the latest example of pareidolia”

We’ve all seen shapes in clouds, or Jesus on a pita, but Mars seems to be a magnet for this phenomenon. This week, William Romoser, a well-known entomologist, presented a paper at the Entomology society meetings in St Louis titled “Does insect/arthropod biodiversity extend beyond earth?”

There is ample evidence to answer the question posed by the title in the affirmative. For several years, I have been engaged in study of the NASA-JPL photographs transmitted to Earth from the surface vehicles sent to explore Mars, Curiosity Rover in particular. These photos are available to the public via the internet. In this poster, I present and discuss numerous examples of insect/arthropod-like forms (fossil & living) found in Mars rover photos. Examples include insect-like forms displaying apparent diversity, clearly recognizable insect/arthropod anatomical features, and flight. Evidence of a fossil reptile-like (serpentine) form and reptile-like forms preying on insect-like forms is also presented. Each example is documented. These findings provide a compelling basis for further study and raise many important questions.

This is the new hobby for old cranks: poring over blurry photographs from exotic places, or odd-shaped rocks, and then leaping to the grand conclusion that it looks vaguely like X, therefore X lives in this place. Remember Mark McMenamin? He found fossil vertebrae, thought they were arranged in a pattern, and decided they were art created by an ancient kraken. Mars is a great font of pareidolia, with Schiaparelli thinking he saw canals, then Percival Lowell thinking likewise, and then there was the Face on Mars, which produced an explosion of very silly books and web pages in the 80s.

Now this guy is spotting all kinds of insects in still photos from the Mars rovers.

“Once a clear image of a given form was identified and described, it was useful in facilitating recognition of other less clear, but none-the-less valid, images of the same basic form,” Romoser said. “An exoskeleton and jointed appendages are sufficient to establish identification as an arthropod. Three body regions, a single pair of antennae, and six legs are traditionally sufficient to establish identification as ‘insect’ on Earth. These characteristics should likewise be valid to identify an organism on Mars as insect-like. On these bases, arthropodan, insect-like forms can be seen in the Mars rover photos.”

Distinct flight behavior was evident in many images, Romoser said. These creatures loosely resemble bumble bees or carpenter bees on Earth. Other images show these “bees” appearing to shelter or nest in caves. And others show a fossilized creature that resembles a snake.

I’ll let you be the judge. Do these look like Martian insects to you?

They look like fuzzily photographed rocks with circles and arrows and labels scribbled on them to me.

Besides, as everyone knows, there aren’t any beetles on Mars — they’re from Liverpool. Mars is supposed to have spiders.

You’ve probably heard about this Ohio law that dictates that teachers can’t penalize students for religious references in their essays and exams. Snopes thinks it’s harmless, and doesn’t affect the separation of church and state. I’m going to say that that is only true if you entirely ignore context and history and take every word literally. Here’s the law:

Sec. 3320.03. No school district board of education, governing authority of a community school established under Chapter 3314. of the Revised Code, governing body of a STEM school established under Chapter 3326. of the Revised Code, or board of trustees of a college-preparatory boarding school established under Chapter 3328. of the Revised Code shall prohibit a student from engaging in religious expression in the completion of homework, artwork, or other written or oral assignments. Assignment grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student’s work.

It’s true, it does say “grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance,” but I have to ask…what is the purpose of this law? That’s how we calculate grades and scores now! Is there some mysterious network of teachers who have been using the frequency of “Praise Jesus!” comments in essays as an essential rubric? This is a law purportedly stating rules for STEM classes, where religious statements are irrelevant. Why do we need a law to set standards for religious statements?

Right now, if a student answers an exam question with the words “Praise Jesus” somewhere on the page, like a little doodle that they did in their spare time, I’d treat it exactly as I would if they sketched a picture of a dinosaur…as something to to ignore. However, if every other sentence in an essay was about Jesus (or dinosaurs — I don’t teach paleontology), I’d start marking it down for incoherence or irrelevancy. “Ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance” prohibit religious expression in most circumstances because we’re going to value clarity, brevity, and accuracy, so this law is redundant.

Except that what it’s really about is getting religion into the STEM curriculum somehow. It’s saying, “Don’t think of an elephant,” knowing that it immediately puts religious parents on guard to protest if their favorite creation myth isn’t discussed in biology class. This law was not written by someone concerned about the teaching of science, but by someone who wants to guarantee that theology will be brought up in science class.

Another way to think of it is that this is a law about a peculiar non-issue. Imagine if Ohio created a law that said you cannot prohibit or penalize a student from engaging in discussion of Jack Nicklaus, golfing legend, in homework, artwork, or other written or oral assignments. Would this actually be a proposal to guarantee fairness in science teaching, or do you think it would be more of an effort to promote Jack Nicklaus? Or golfing. Or the lawmaker’s golf course.

We’ve also got decades of precedent where creationists like to nibble away, inserting references to their beliefs in all kinds of laws, and then standing back with an expression of incredulity that you’d find this harmless little acknowledgment of America’s Christian heritage at all offensive, but they’ll build on it and grow and grow the Jesus nonsense a phrase at a time into the law books. They’re patient and dedicated. That law is only the first step to expand religious bias into STEM classes, I promise you.

Here we go again. Remember that silly “Sovereign Nations” conference? An obscure organization — actually little more than a single crank with money — invites a couple of dubious atheist celebrities to a weekend in London to give a couple of talks. Sure, that’s a conference all right, by definition, and that’s how many currently respected atheist conferences had their beginning, but it’s not much of an effort to communicate and share ideas. What made it weird is that some people treated it as a distinctive mark of honor that conferred instant credibility on a particular narrow point of view. It didn’t help that Richard Dawkins praised it (at first…when he learned that organizer was a strange religious conservative, he back-pedaled.)

It’s happening again. In this case, two people I never heard of announced an atheist conference in England and immediately got an endorsement from Richard Dawkins. It’s called the Anti-Theism International Convention. They got some respectable people, like Maryam Namazie and Stephen Law and Aron Ra, and then…Lawrence Krauss. A gaggle of YouTubers better known for their opposition to transgender issues and support for Rationality Rules. Lurking in their unused video promos is Richard Carrier. I think I can already detect a bias here — this is just another reaction to #MeToo, trying to whitewash misogyny.

One of the organizers is someone named John Richards, the publications director for Atheist Alliance International. You know, the organization that recently hired David Silverman. By this time, the whole thing is reeking of sliminess.

But OK, they have the right to organize a conference, and I’m not going to oppose it. Please do go buy a ticket for £199 if this is the kind of thing that floats your boat. I’ll just mention that you’re being bamboozled. This is an impromptu money grab by a small group in a pretend organization that didn’t exist until this past July, when they created a Facebook page, a Facebook page that is practically empty of content and has no commenters. It’s an empty shell of an organization that seems to have been a spontaneous brain fart by a pair of obscure nobodies.

Again, that’s fine. That’s how big events get started, and they all have to get started somewhere. I’ll just point out that this one contains a heck of a lot of ridiculous claims.

One of their big things is a gala awards banquet, in which they’ll be handing out awards for “Atheist of the Year” and “Jesus Mythicist of the Year” and “Best Atheist Video of the Year”, etc. You can make nominations, if you’d like, but a panel of unnamed judges will make the final decision, and I suspect that all the winners will conform to the organizer’s somewhat regressive political leanings. Furthermore, the hyperbole will turn your stomach.

You’ve heard of the Oscars, Emmys and Baftas?

This is the Attys! (the Anti-Theism International Awards)

Yes, I’ve heard of the Oscars, Emmys and Baftas. The “Attys” are not exactly of the same rank. It gets worse.

The Atty Awards are probably the most prestigious Awards in the Atheist Community and winning a Atty Award will not only get you recognition within the Atheist Community, it will give you a chance to enjoy giving worldwide speaking engagements as well as Keynote presentations at many events around the world. The Awards will be presented by some of the most famous atheist on the planet and the winners will be invited to the VIP area of the after awards ceremony for photo opportunites and press talks.

These “Atty Awards” have not been given out before, are a new invention of this oddly new and nebulous organization, and they are already the most prestigious award an atheist can get? Wow. Winning one will get you worldwide speaking engagements? Really? I sure hope none of the winners proudly advertise themselves as recipients of an Atty Award, because it’s not going to impress. I think all it means is that John Richards likes you this year, and that and $3 will get you a cup of coffee from the Caribou stand in the supermarket in Morris, Minnesota.

OK, I’ll sweeten the deal. I’m giving out the Morris Award for the Most Lost Atheist of 2020 to the first godless person to hit me up at the Willies Supervalu. I’ll even pay for the cup of coffee. Keep the cup, because I’m sure it will get you prestigious invitations to worldwide speaking engagements.

A decade ago, when vocal atheists were busy denouncing Christianity and other religions and furiously writing books against them, who would have thought that evangelical Christians themselves would deliver the death blow to their faith?

It’s amazing. All the values they claimed to have, that they claimed were sacred and intrinsic to their religion, casually discarded and converted to praise for a wealthy, corrupt boor. They just took everything we said was wrong with Christianity and validated it.

Unfortunately, at the same time, much of atheism decided to abandon the moral high ground and join the Christians in anti-feminism, anti-immigration, racist bullshit, so we can’t claim victory. It seems to be a general failure of humanity.