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It’s often thrown at atheists that atheism offers no ultimate purpose for living. Aside from pretending that this somehow discredits all the purpose we actually have, this argument forgets one thing: just because the theist has faith that he has an ultimate purpose for living, it does not mean he actually has that ultimate purpose. The point is merely an entirely unpersuasive Argument from Consequence.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Argument from Consequence, Thought of the day | 7 Comments »
It’s annoying enough when Christopher Maloney wades in over his head and pretends to know something about medicine beyond what a pre-med student might know. But it’s even more annoying when he goes after atheists. (And, I mean, does he really want to go down that road, what with yet offering a viable defense for his quackery?)
I’m constantly amazed that the spokespeople for religious points of view aren’t better at getting their points across. The atheists are the one group who could have picked their spokespeople logically and by open election, but they let the most grumpy of their brethren carry the flag. Here’s a comparison of Dawkins vs. Gervais. If Gervais were the spokesperson for atheism, there would be a lot more converts. He makes his point, and you can’t help liking him for it. Dawkins makes a clever (rehearsed- he gives the same mocking answer to others as well) response without engaging the speaker.
Here’s Richard Dawkins not answering a question. Or answering it, if answering with the same question is an answer.
He then links to this video of Dawkins where an audience member asks what happens if he’s wrong about the Christian god. Dawkins replies by asking the audience member what if she’s wrong about all the other gods. To Maloney, this isn’t answering the question.
Is Dawkins’ point really that hard to get? He’s saying that the only reason that question seems reasonable to the audience member is that she has been brought up in a Christian culture. His question about what it means if she’s wrong about Zeus or Thor or whoever is to show that it doesn’t matter about what god we want to ask the question. It’s a trivial issue that assumes a lot of culture with it. So what if he’s wrong about the Christian god? Then he goes to hell, to the glee of a so-called benevolent creator. And if the audience member is wrong about Allah, she can kiss heaven goodbye. Who cares? The whole question is just a rudimentary way of posing Pascal’s Wager, that piece of philosophical trash.
Oh, and I love how Maloney links back to religion and atheism, as if we need his help in defining the terms. (Well, maybe he needs some help in defining “atheism”.) And linking to the IMDb page for Dawkins? Gold. I love when the elderly use the Internet.
Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: Christopher Maloney, Quack quack quack, Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais | 2 Comments »
I love this video. Deepak Chopra, one of the biggest charlatans in the world, gets smacked around with incredible ease by Leonard Mlodinow, co-author of The Grand Design.
Filed under: Humor | Tagged: Deepak Chopra, Leonard Mlodinow | 13 Comments »
I was searching for PZ Myers YouTube videos but moments ago when I came across this magnificent piece of garbage from Christopher Maloney.
Let’s start from the top:
Maloney did collaborate with Andreas Moritz. Maloney can keep claiming that PZ retracted this or that, but the fact of the matter is this is what PZ actually said:
However, at the very least, Maloney was used as a pretext to shut down the blog. WordPress sent Hawkins email demanding changes to his posts, specifically this one:
[Email from WordPress]
…Someone targeted Hawkins, and sent a demand to WordPress to shut him down. This is someone in communication with Maloney, because Maloney just sent me this email:
And he goes on to quote an email in which Maloney admits to being in contact with Moritz. There is no doubt that these two acted together to report me to WordPress; does anyone believe Maloney didn’t know what Moritz was doing? does anyone believe Maloney didn’t tell Moritz exactly what to send to WordPress? does anyone believe anything Maloney says?
Next Maloney claims my original letter about him has since been pulled from the Kennebec Journal, as if to suggest the paper saw how dastardly it was and just had to remove it! In fact, the KJ remodeled its website shortly after my letter was published – no letter from that period can be found. As evidence for my point, take a look at my response to a couple letters others wrote in response to what I wrote. Now try to follow the links to those letters back to the KJ’s website. (Let me know how that works out for you, Maloney.)
Maloney then goes on to claim he’s just a poor victim who is being harassed by the big mean mob. In fact, since destroying his web presence for getting my blog shut down with the help of Moritz, all the posts about him have been responses. I’ve often said he can’t make things better, he can only not make them worse. Apparently I was being too subtle: stop trying to promote your quackery and everyone will stop ‘harassing’ you. You, Maloney, make things worse by creating elaborate responses months after the fact – case-in-point, this YouTube video.
Next Maloney, for some bizarre reason, tries to say what atheists oppose: authoritarianism. It’s perplexing because atheism is not a philosophy, not an indicator of how to act (or how one will act), and it isn’t a normative position. Atheism is a position that says, for whatever reason, theism is not worth holding. Even then it is necessary to qualify that this only means it is not worth holding for that particular atheist. Many atheists are pro-theism and see it as a positive in the world; they just reject what they see as being positive as also being true. Of course, many atheists do happen to reject that theism is positive (mostly because arriving at atheism is generally for rational people and it’s only rational to see theism as a propagator of evil) but that does not mean that it is possible to know what positions an atheist holds by virtue of knowing he is an atheist. As usual, Maloney is out of his league.
After some rambling Maloney tries to bumble his way out of being called a quack by saying what he does doesn’t fit into the etymology of the word. Feel free to skip over that part of the video. He’s a quack because he practices a form of medicine for which there is no convincing evidence.
Weird that continued attempts to reestablish himself and promote his quackery have resulted in yet another blog post, huh?
Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: Christopher Maloney, Naturopathy, pz myers, Quack quack quack, Steven Novella | 4 Comments »
I’m still waiting for even a shred of evidence for God.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: The incapabilities of theists, Thought of the day | 1 Comment »
Eliot Cutler is the most reasonable choice for Maine governor. He’s the one who has a commanding grasp of all the issues, the one with the most reasonable plans, and the one who isn’t going to mess everything up (that honor would be LePage’s). Libby Mitchell would be a fine choice as well, but Cutler has her beat in a number of issues, especially where it comes to being independent of a political system.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Creationist Paul LePage, Eliot Cutler, Libby Mitchell, Maine governor | Leave a comment »
He just hates poor people.
Creationist Republican/Tea Party candidate for Maine governor Paul LePage rages against government and the assistance it gives to poor people. He’s intensely angry that anyone would have the audacity to take his money from him in order to help others. But this isn’t some pure libertarian stance he’s taking. No, as is well-known, the LePages stole a lot of money from Florida by illegally claim double-residency, thus getting their children in-state tuition at massive savings. This, as is the case with virtually all Tea Party supporters, is about greed. LePage is willing to take government assistance – welfare – from the state of Florida when it suits his wallet, but when it comes to helping anyone else he wants to put caps on benefits and slash every service under the sun.
Paul LePage is just another greedy Republican/Teabagger who is out to get his own. It has only ever been about his own wallet.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Ann LePage, Florida, Homestead Exemption, Paul LePage, Teabagger | 17 Comments »
The courts have traditionally been the place where the immorality of bigoted Americans has gone to die. Today is no different.
A federal judge issued a worldwide injunction Tuesday immediately stopping enforcement of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, suspending the 17-year-old ban on openly gay U.S. troops.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’ landmark ruling also ordered the government to suspend and discontinue all pending discharge proceedings and investigations under the policy.
The Obama Administration is under no obligation to challenge this. It’s unclear what this administration will do, especially this close to midterm elections, but I feel decent about the right decision being made. A challenge to this ruling would be a slap in the face to all the gay people who serve the United States in uniform, not to mention a weakening of our military. There’s no rational justification in DADT and it needs to stop.
Filed under: News, Rights | Tagged: DADT, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Gays, Judge Virginia Phillips, Rights | 4 Comments »
As usual, the wonderful writing over at Shambling After deserves recognition.
I lived in a little bubble of ignorant bliss and although I convinced myself that I was concerned with the rest of the world, I couldn’t even begin to comprehend how much of the world there is to be concerned with.
This is about Cairo, but the same feeling found its way into me while I was in Africa. The constant dirt and abject poverty was something I expected, but it wasn’t something for which I was necessarily ready. I found myself often thinking, when people say they’re suffering, when they say they have it bad, it’s all relative. The tiny villages of Tanzania have suffering, they have it bad. That isn’t to say there is nothing but misery there – the number of smiling children I saw astounded me – but it isn’t ice cream and video games. When black Americans say they can relate to their ‘home land’, I now have nothing but contempt for such statements. Just as when a white person says he can at all relate to being black in America, the claim would be risible if it wasn’t such a lie. And I’m not saying I can relate merely because of what I saw while I sat in a Range Rover with my hundreds of dollars worth of hiking equipment and Slim Jims. But I do at least know I can’t relate.
To steal the Samuel Johnson quote used at Shambling After,
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: Africa, Cairo, Samuel Johnson, Shambling After, Tanzania, Travel | Leave a comment »
The notion that theists can take comfort in living for some purpose shows at least two things: (1) that they’re oblivious to the fact that they’re wrong that there is an ultimate purpose. It’s all a big if, then situation – if everything they say is true, then they can take comfort. Too bad they’ve never bothered to offer any evidence for any of their claims. (2) The whole game is really just about comfort. People fear death, they fear losing all they have, they fear not existing. That probably has played a role in the invention – and certainly the persistence – of religion. And it is this need for comfort manifested through religion that has lead to hostility towards science. We can’t stop the need for comfort, nor do we want to stop it, but we can stop religion, if even only theoretically.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Comfort, Thought of the day | Leave a comment »
For the Sake of Science 