Waa waa waaaaa

Jeffrey Jena, one of those right-wing kooks, is upset about something terribly traumatic that happened to him. Someone unfriended him on Facebook for being a wingnut! Don’t you know that lefty liberals are supposed to always pretend to be friends with the goons and thugs of the right?

Have any of you been dumped on Facebook for being racist, homophobic gun toting morons lately? Have some of your tolerant, diversity seeking “Progressive”friends tossed you under the bus for having the temerity to express a conservative opinion based on facts?

He’s so upset about the fact that people judge him on his hateful views that he has created a facebook group of his own, Conservatives “Un-Friended” by a Liberal for Political Opinions. What a sense of absurd entitlement.

You know, I’ve had a few people write to me to say that they weren’t going to be my friend on facebook because I was some kind of deranged Jesus-hating socialist. As if I cared. Really, any of you who are my friends on facebook can leave right now, no hard feelings, if you dislike my positions on anything. Go ahead. I don’t mind. I promise I won’t crawl sobbing into my bedroom, weeping because someone clicked a button on their facebook page.

Poor Jeffy. He only has 1682 friends right now. To make him feel better, everyone should send him a friend request right now. Then, after he accepts it, drop him and make him cry.

And if he doesn’t accept it, he must be one of those nasty intolerant bigots who can’t stand people with different political opinions.

You can tell where this is going, but you can hardly believe it when it gets there

Some men have a particularly oblivious sense of privilege — these are the kinds of evil freaks who murder their children at the prospect that their ex-wife might get custody. The fact that they are men is used to blind them to the fact that there are these other human beings called women out there who have just as much right to their lives as they do.

Here’s the opening paragraph of a blog post by a self-proclaimed anti-feminist.

When men have something women have less of, such as money or power, women simply take it by force. It’s called affirmative action and feminists believe it’s right. I am not going to argue against that. I accept that as a lost cause. So instead I am going to embrace forced equality and demand it for men as well.

What do women have that men don’t? Vaginas. So poor pathetic Eivend Berge is asserting his right to rape. He’s quite open about it: “it is about time men in feminist countries such as Norway stop thinking of rape as wrong” and “Rape is equality.” You’ll find his type is fairly common among a group who call themselves “Men’s Rights” proponents, where Men’s Right seems to be to maintain economic and social inequities that benefit them.

I’m afraid he needs to learn that legal corrections to a long and ongoing history of economic oppression of women are fair and just, and not comparable to using violence to abuse and degrade and physically and emotionally harm women. I should also point out that women have lived with this fear of rape for essentially the entire history of the human race, so his self-serving manifesto isn’t exactly novel.

Just to warp your perception of rotten males a little more, some of the comments there are all about giving him tips on improving his appearance to be a better pick up artist (PUA). Sometimes I’m really embarrassed by my gender. I’m also wondering now if the fact that we’ve got our oh-so-sensitive testicles dangling gently in a place just ripe for a savage kick isn’t an example of cosmic justice, after all.

No better demonstration of the futility of prayer

Angela Wright had a serious heart attack two months ago; she seems to have had a history of cardiovascular problems, because she’d also had a series of blood clots in her leg that required a partial amputation about 20 years ago.

Her very supportive family seems to be the pious sort. They dropped to their knees and started praying fiercely for her. Then she had another heart attack, but she didn’t die, and the family prayed harder and also said ‘hallelujah, the prayers are keeping her alive!”

Then there was another heart attack. More prayers, more certainty that the prayers were all that was keeping her going (ignore for the moment the fact that she’s in a hospital, surrounded by doctors and nurses and monitoring equipment).

Then there was another heart attack, and another, and another. Pray, pray, pray. Pray some more.

She isn’t dead yet. At this point I feel like screaming, “Stop praying! You’re killing her!” It sure doesn’t seem like they’re helping at all. I would call six heart attacks in a row a good reason to admit that no, God doesn’t seem to want to stop tormenting this poor woman.

Now it’s really getting ridiculous: Wright has been lying in bed for months, her heart battered and scarred, and meanwhile, more circulation problems or clots have reduced blood flow to her extremities, and her toes have turned black and are rotting. The doctors want to amputate, they need to amputate, and her husband Dwight is refusing, and is actually making a scene at the hospital — they had to bar him from the ward. Why is he refusing?

Because he wants to give his prayers more time to work.

Now that is delusional thinking. Face reality, man. Prayer doesn’t work, never has, and all the evidence is staring you in the face that your wife is dangerously ill and needs the best, unimpeded medical care possible…not more muttering to a heedless myth.

There can be no happy ending here. If she dies, her family is going to blame the doctors for interfering with their magical treatment of happy thoughts and shouting into the ether; if she lives, the family will blame the doctors for any reduction in the quality of her life afterwards.

I’m just impressed with the dedication of the medical staff to keep on persevering for the benefit of this woman from a family of ignorant jackasses.

I’m sorry, Toronto. Nobody deserves Deepak.

Look who’s coming to the Royal Ontario Museum: Deepak Chopra. What were they thinking when they invited that pompous fraud to speak?

World renowned teacher, author and philosopher Deepak Chopra presents his latest concepts in the field of mind-body medicine bridging the technological miracles of the West with the wisdom of the East. He will show you how your highest vision of yourself can be turned into physical reality and discuss how you can become a living cell within the body of a living universe. You don’t join the cosmic dance – you become the dance. Deepak will address the deeper meaning of our existence including: What is our true nature? What is the meaning and purpose of our existence? How can I transform myself? How can I make a better world? Deepak explains how the greatest spiritual secrets are tied up in this simple answer: You can’t change the body without changing the self, and you can’t change the self without bringing in the soul. He explains, “It’s all one process, and it begins with knowing that your body exists to mirror who you are and who you want to be.”

Deepak Chopra is the author of more than 56 books translated into over 35 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers in both the fiction and non-fiction categories. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, Adjunct Professor at Kellogg School of Management and Senior Scientist with The Gallup Organization. Time magazine heralds Deepak Chopra as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century and credits him as “the poet-prophet of alternative medicine.” For more information visit: www.deepakchopra.com

Location: Convocation Hall, 31 King’s College Circle, University of Toronto

Cost: Price: Ground VIP: $175, Rise Area: $89, 1st Balcony: $69, 2nd Balcony: $49, Behind Stage: $25

There isn’t one thing in that block of fluff that interests me in the slightest — it’s all noise by a charlatan. But oh, man, look what he’s charging! If anyone goes or has an opportunity to work backstage at the hall, please take a photo of the “Ground VIP” section: if I were in Toronto, I’d want to know who the chief airheads in the region were, and that’s a fine starting point.

I get email

This is utterly incomprehensible.

YOGI

YOU SEEM TO LIVE EXCLUSIVELY IN THE
“AFTERMATH” DIMENSION.

SAD REALLY… AND PATHETICALLY
UNORIGINAL AND UNCREATIVE.

USE YOUR “BIG BRAIN” TO EXPLAIN
911… YOU AMERICAN IMBECILE.

ALAN

One noteworthy thing about it: I haven’t modified the formatting at all. It actually was sent to me in giant blue all-caps Comic Sans.

Christopher Maloney is still a QUACK!

He’s still complaining. Maloney is the naturopath in Maine who makes inflated claims about the efficacy of his magic drugs, and who still pops by here and now then to protest feebly, and he’s still making stuff up elsewhere. It also turns out that he has a page warning the world about me and you readers.

The infamous PZ Myers asked those who visit his blog to repeat this message all over the internet. He chose me because of false accusations from a local freshman, who blamed me for getting his insipid little clone blog kicked off the internet. Since Myers runs a thing called the endless thread, the majority of his popularity is manufactured by random postings. But multiple clone sites attach themselves to his and we have a flotilla of clones masquerading as independent thinkers.

When PZ Myers was questioned, he eventually retracted his original accusations, but his clone sites did not. I have spent considerable time answering questions at both PZ Myers site and Dr. Novella’s sister site. Dr. Novella acts as the “brain trust” and “spanks” anyone who questions PZ Myers.

Whoa. You can manufacture popularity with random postings? Why hasn’t everyone leapt upon this tactic? He also seems to like the terms “clone blog” and “clone site” to refer to anyone on the web who has noticed that Christopher Maloney is a quack.

By the way, I did not retract anything I said about him: he is a quack. Steve Novella is not my servant; I’m sure he’d laugh at the idea that he supports me unquestioningly. Novella dropped the evidence bomb on Maloney, nothing more.

Maloney has also given the Pharyngula gang an entry in his main menu. Are you flattered? He claims there that I have moderated him out of existence. He has not been banned in any way, however; his evidence is that he includes a copy of a comment that did not get posted. It has five links in it. Hmmm…I guess I must have targeted that one for deletion because it was so persuasive. The fact that we have filtering software that screens comments for excessive links is irrelevant.

Oh, well, I guess I’ll just have to be kind and reply by boosting Maloney’s reputation on Google as a quack a little more.

Who to blame for the oil spill?

Everyone knows by now that there has been a catastrophic oil platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the biggest oil spill in American history…and it is still spewing and people are still talking about expanding offshore drilling. The actual causes of this accident stem from deregulation and exceeding legal restrictions, but you know, that assumes that no one wanted this environmental disaster to occur; we are presuming that it actually is a horrible accident.

It takes a mind unfettered by the constraints of reason and evidence to assume otherwise. It requires the brain of Rush Limbaugh.

The cap and trade bill was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants. What better way to head off more oil drilling and nuclear plants than blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.

Limbaugh’s official transcript is different (don’t ask me why), and even crazier — he babbles about SWAT teams sent down to the Gulf and Al Gore inciting civil disobedience to further his crazy claims.

I think he’s been reading too many Michael Crichton novels.

“Hello, My name is Herb Grossman”

It’s hard to find something dumber than Kent Hovind, but here you go: the website of Herb Grossman, trashevolution. It’s what Hovind could have produced if he’d been an alcoholic gay man in denial. He has a rambling, mostly incoherent set of pages that he claims disprove evolution, but if you read just one, it should be his page on homosexuality. It doesn’t really exist, you know, although he has been feeling supernatural homosexual urges for years.

No one has to be a homosexual, because—

—Homosexuality is a Cruel Deception,

and you should not worry about possibly being a homosexual, because there is no such thing–homosexuality is an evil supernatural trick! The key is to fight it, and the sooner the better. I still sometimes get supernatural “urges” towards perversions or homosexuality, but by immediately rejecting “it” (both physically and mentally), “it” goes away.

What I write or say concerning belief in evolution being a major encouragement towards homosexuality is not meant to win some popularity contest. Some of you will laugh and think I am stupid for writing this, but the shoes I have walked in–the years of aggravation while fighting off the cause of homosexuality–have given me a certain amount of sympathy for the homosexual and a hatred for the way evolution is such a big factor in keeping many of them trapped in their unfortunate perversion. It would be a crime for me to know what I know and not do something, because I thoroughly believe that many people will benefit from knowing of the troubles I’ve been through and will be inspired to avoid or get out of the homosexual trap

He never does get around to explaining how evolutionary biology contributes to homosexuality, and after reading about his miserable life with two angry divorces, 35 years of alcoholism and gambling addiction, I’m thinking he’s about the last person I’d want advising me on how to live a good life. Instead of actually addressing anything about evolution or homosexuality, though, what Mr Grossman does next is recite a litany of “supernatural” events that occurred to him and which prove there is a god. Here’s my favorite of his examples:

I had several situations where I would be sitting and think of something good I could do, and a big foam-rubber-like hand would then pat me on a shoulder as if approving of my thoughts. Was an invisible person standing beside me? Some supernatural person was–and I was inclined to think “God,” but I now suspect it was really someone conditioning me towards accepting supernatural deceptions.

Did I mention that he was a long-term alcoholic? Yes, I did. This is what most of his supernatural events are: imaginary incidents, bleary fantasies of seeing things that weren’t there. And then, finally, he ties this all back to his ideas about homosexuality (but not evolution):

It wasn’t long before I fell into about three months of doing perverse, homosexual acts with invisible, supernatural people/beings* Strong thoughts and sensations would get things started, but I was not the cause–no pornography used. Somebody had control of me! (I did meet up with some visible demonic types, but those encounters, although weird, were not of a homosexual nature).

*I have never acted in any perverted/homosexual manner with any man or boy, nor felt any attraction/sensation towards the same. However, I am not claiming total innocence on my part, as I must admit to some perverse actions (sometimes with use of pornography) in my past that I am ashamed of (I wish I knew then what I know now). Looking back, I suspect those past actions likely made me an attractive target to the supernatural “persons’ that drive the homosexual deception system. To be fair, though, I realize there are many social forces and situations that might condition a person to accept the homosexual deception. and I do not doubt that some people have fallen into the homosexuality trap without having prior perverse activities:

What a sad, repressed, confused little man. He never felt any attraction towards other men…he just fantasized about homosexual acts with invisible people. And has so little ability to distinguish the imaginary from the actual that he thinks those dreaming encounters were real, but at the same time not real enough to count as gay impulses.

The other sad thing about his series of articles is that he’s addressing them to “Mr. or Miss Teenager of America.” He’s trying to reach out to youth and convince them that he has all the answers, but I can guess what young people will think: “Ewww. Creepy old loser.”

I get email

I was cleaning out my filtered junk mail folder, and what do I discover? Mail after mail after mail from a long-banned kook, the infamously idiotic John A. Davison. Davison’s is notoriously incompetent: this is the fellow who has created multiple blogs, each with one entry, which he closes when it gathers enough comments…most of which are from Davison himself. He also tends to get in long running battles in blog comments, all over his dismissal of evolution, which he regards as the most important battle in the history of mankind!!!. He has also reported me to my university provost.

He has banned here for a long time. He’s banned just about everywhere, which he complains bitterly about, but it’s entirely because he’s obsessive and insane and repetitive — even the ID/creationist blogs can’t stand him.

So he’s been dunning me with email, apparently. He’s usually yelling at me to pay attention to him, and spamming links to one of his blogs…usually to some specific comment at his blog, because, as is par for the course, his blogs have almost no actual entries, just long mumbling rants by himself in the comment threads.

But he’s been so persistent that I’ll give him a moment’s attention, just to taunt him. Because he’s such an ass, though, I’m going to torment him by deleting all the links he sent me. Trust me, they all say the same thing: “I love it so,” and various permutations of his claim that evolution is finished, and that he has proven it wrong. He hasn’t.

These are just the most recent of his missives. There are many more, but I’ve deleted them.

22 March:

Dear PeeZee,

I invite you to savor my several recent essays which can be found on the link –

  url redacted  

Perhaps you would be willing to introduce them to your flock so they can enjoy them as well.

It doesn’t get any better thn this.

22 March:

Dear Pee Zee

Enjoy my recent essays –

  url redacted  

Let me know how you feel about them.

30 March:

  url redacted  

#712

Enjoy!

15 April:

Check out my latest challenge –

  url redacted  

and acknowledge it. I will look for it!

22 April:

Hey PeeZee,

Why don’t you call the attention of your drooling retards to the emails you get from me? I’ll look for it!

27 April:

PeeZee,

  url redacted  

#267

Enjoy!

28 April:

Dear PeeZee,

A collection of my unpublished Evolution papers is now available

  url to self-published book redacted  

The definitve cover and possible endoresements are not yet in place.

29 April:

Dear PeeZee

  url redacted  

#404

I expect to see an acknowledgement that I exist on Pharyngula.

30 April:

PeeZee

Why don’t you rate my book? I’m sure your fans would love to see you destroy it. I will look for it!

30 April:

Pee Zee

I see you, like Dawkins and Elsberry, go right on petending I don’t exist. That won’t work any longer. You clowns are finished. Now get cracking and recognize that you have been mortally wounded. The longer you ignore me and my sources the worse it wll be for you. I will see to it. Trust me.

1 May:

Dear PeeZee

How does it feel to realize that everything you believe is about to be exposed as meaningless drivel? It must be awful for you. Check out my Why Banishment? thread from time to time. There you will discover that [email protected] refuses to accept my emails, a response in itself. Lynn Margulis has resorted to the same desperate device. If you Darwinian mystics think you can continue your time honored tradition of ignoring your real adversaries, you are all very sadly mistaken. It is crunch time PeeZee. Gird your loins. The longer you insist on silence the worse it will be for you. I will see to it and will enjoy every moment of it! Trust me.

Cheers

John

He’s just getting crazier and crazier, and now he’s beginning to sound like that other banned kook, Dennis Markuze.

In the aftermath of Boobquake…

Jen has put up the numbers — this was clearly an effective PR move, doing a good job of bringing an absurdity to the public’s attention. I think it’s important that we use more humor and make more noise to wake people up, because this problem of religious ‘prophets’ using natural events to bolster their superstition has been around for a long time. I was sent this little essay which seems appropriate. Note the date: it’s 9 years old.

NATURAL DISASTERS – UNNATURAL ACTS
Are Natural Disasters Caused by Unnatural Acts?
June 27, 2001
Janis Walworth

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, once warned Orlando, Florida, that it was courting natural disaster by allowing gay pride flags to be flown along its streets. “A condition like this will bring about … earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor,” Robertson said.

Apparently he was referring to his belief that the presence of openly gay people incurs divine wrath and that God acts through geological and meteorological events to destroy municipalities that permit gay people the same civil liberties as others.

Before Pat and his Christian cronies get too carried away promulgating the idea that natural disasters are prompted by people who displease God, they should take a hard look at the data.

Tornadoes

Take tornadoes. Every state (except Alaska) has them — some only one or two a year, dozens in others.

Gay people are in every state (even Alaska). According to Pat’s hypothesis, there should be more gay people in states that have more tornadoes. But are there?

Nope. In fact, there’s no correlation at all between the number of gay folks (as estimated by the number of gay political organizations, support groups, bookstores, radio programs, and circuit parties) and the annual tornado count (r = .04, p = .78 for you statisticians).

So much for the “God hates gays” theory.

God seems almost neutral on the subject of sexual orientation. I say “almost” because if we look at the density of gay groups relative to the population as a whole, there is a small but statistically significant (p = .05) correlation with the occurrence of tornadoes. And it’s a negative correlation (r= -.28).

For those of you who haven’t used statistics since 1973, that means that a high concentration of gay organizations actually protects against tornadoes. A state with the population of, say, Alabama could avert two tornadoes a year, merely by doubling the number of gay organizations in the state.

Although God may not care about sexual orientation, the same cannot be said for religious affiliation. If the underlying tenet of Pat’s postulate is true — that God wipes out offensive folks via natural disasters — then perhaps we can find some evidence of who’s on God’s hit list.

Jews are off the hook here: there’s no correlation between numbers of Jews and frequency of tornadoes. Ditto for Catholics. But when it comes to Protestants, there’s a highly significant correlation of .71.

This means that fully half the state-to-state variation in tornado frequency can be accounted for by the presence of Protestants. And the chance that this association is merely coincidental is only one in 10,000.

Tornados Drawn to Baptists

Protestants, of course, come in many flavors — we were able to find statistics for Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, and others. Lutherans don’t seem to be a problem — no correlation with tornadoes. There’s a modest correlation (r = .52, p= .0001) between Methodists and tornadoes.

But Baptists and others share the prize: both groups show a definite correlation with tornado frequency (r = .68, p = .0001). This means that Texas could cut its average of 139 tornadoes per year in half by sending a few hundred thousand Baptists elsewhere (Alaska maybe?). What, you are probably asking yourself, about gay Protestants? An examination of the numbers of gay religious groups (mostly Protestant) reveals no significant relationship with tornadoes.

Perhaps even Protestants are less repugnant to God if they’re gay.

And that brings up another point — the futility of trying to save the world by getting gay people to accept Jesus. It looks from our numbers as if the frequency of natural disasters might be more effectively reduced by encouraging Protestants to be gay.

Gay people have been falsely blamed for disasters ever since Sodom was destroyed by fire and brimstone. (We have been unable to find any statistics on disasters involving brimstone).

According to a reliable source, the destruction of Sodom was indeed an act of God (see Genesis 19:13). Its destruction was perpetrated because the citizens thereof were, according to the same source (see Ezekiel 16:49-50) “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned [and] did not help the poor and needy” — not because they were gay.

Now Pat would have us believe that gays are the cause of tornadoes (as well as earthquakes, meteors, and even terrorist bombs) in utter disregard for evidence showing that Baptists are much more likely to cause them.

As any statistician will tell you, of course, correlation doesn’t prove causation. Protestants causing tornadoes by angering God isn’t the only explanation for these data. It could be that Baptists and other Protestants purposely flock to states that have lots of tornadoes (no, we haven’t checked for a correlation between IQ and religious affiliation).

But if Pat and his Christian crew insist that natural disasters are brought on by people who offend God, let the data show who those people are.

Sources: Tornado Occurrence by State, 1962-1991 1990 Churches and Church Membership; Population by State, 1990 US Census; Gay & Lesbian Political Organizations, Support Groups, and Religious Groups from Gayellow Pages, National Edition, 1987.