Christopher Maloney: still lying

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Michael

You all know Christopher Maloney, the quack with a history of lying. For quite some time he has remained pretty quiet, unlike Andreas Moritz, thus preventing himself from appearing on FTSOS too much. Unfortunately, I just came across some of his lies.

2/25/10
Michael Hawkins’ blog was offline for all of four days, including a weekend that involved a general wordpress failure of many sites. At this point it is clear the entire skeptic charade was a lot of screaming about nothing but standard software error. I don’t expect an apology anytime soon.

First, my site was down for 6 days. Second, Maloney is trying to say that the reason my site was down was because WordPress had technical difficulties. Those difficulties lasted a short period of time and were unrelated to the suspension of FTSOS that happened. But does anyone expect a scummy person like Maloney to be honest?

Michael Hawkins of Augusta ran a blog attacking me for a few months. In the process he began arguing with his webhost, got himself suspended, then argued with them again and got kicked off.

He flatters himself. There was one post of a letter I sent to the editor in response to Maloney. That letter was too strongly worded, so I sent another and posted that. I then responded to the responses that raised. I then responded to an email that threatened legal action from one of Maloney’s fans. (There was also one more post that merely mentioned Maloney, but was not about him.) He makes it sound like this blog is all about him. It isn’t. Most of the topics are far more interesting, and in fact, there were over 75 other posts made over the time I mentioned Maloney.

Of course Maloney has to conveniently forget all the details, right? He says that “in the process” of my posts about him I began arguing with WordPress. That isn’t true. I only made a post about “Mark” from WordPress being a simpleton after I got a warning from WordPress (as well as a brief suspension, what with this host’s shoot-first policy). I was pretty much done with Maloney at that point. But, of course, what Maloney doesn’t mention is that he was emailing Moritz back and forth; Moritz, armed with false information about Maloney’s status in Maine, had gone to WordPress. Does anyone else believe this makes Maloney innocent?

But there’s more!

My deepest apologies to my friends and neighbors who received the “Without Apology” hate mail.

Michael Hawkins is someone I have never met. He is not a patient, does not know any of my patients, and is only interested in attacking me because he wants attention. Today he waited until I was away from my home before stuffing his hate mail inside my screen door, which gives a pretty good sense of him as a person.

As I noted in my post about that edition of Without Apology, I specifically tried avoiding Maloney’s home. There were two houses which had lights on inside, but the outside light was too low for me to see the numbers. Since I don’t like approaching homes while people are awake at that time unless I can throw my paper from a distance (I’d rather not scare people), I did not get close enough to check the exact address. Maloney’s house number is 4, so I thought I was avoiding house 4 and 6 or 4 and 2. If anything, I was disappointed that I couldn’t risk giving all his neighbors my publication. Apparently he did get a paper, which is great, but I specifically tried avoiding giving him one because he sent me an email telling me not to contact him, his family, friends, or neighbors. He has a legitimate request on the first two counts, but his friends and neighbors are not off-limits. The fact that he mentioned them (not that I know any of his friends) is why I went to his neighborhood.

But my favorite part of this is that he thinks I know when he is and isn’t home. How? Does he think I stalk him? That’s the first time I’ve ever been on his small road. Hell, I wasn’t even sure which house was his. And I certainly didn’t “stuff” anything in anyone’s screen door. I would never open someone’s door like that because 1) that’s creepy and 2) it would make a lot of noise. It’s possible that I placed a paper in the handles of some doors, but I doubt it since the papers are small and would have just fallen out. I pretty much just throw the papers on porches or some other visible location.

I encourage any and all neighbors to contact the Augusta city police department if they see him lurking around. The department is already very familiar with him because he spent one of his “newspaper” issues attacking them after he received a parking ticket.

Lol? Yes, lol.

I walked around his neighborhood in light colored khakis and a red shirt. I’m not sure how that is lurking.

But again with the lies. My article about the Augusta Police was not merely over a parking ticket. It was about an officer who did not understand that he needed to hand over certain records under the Maine Freedom of Information Act. The ticket was from years ago and played a small role in the motivation for asking for the records. (The bigger motivation was course requirement for a journalism class I happened to be taking.) I eventually received a written and signed apology from the chief of police over the incident.

On a side note, I’ve been surprised no one has asked me what I’ve been doing this whole time. I know people have seen me in various neighborhoods, but no one has asked me what’s up. Granted, other than once when it was freezing, I always wear fairly bright clothes, but it seems like the “Neighborhood Watch” signs should mean something.

But sure, tell the police that you see me. If I continue with the paper, I’ll even be sure to let them know when I’m going to be distributing it so they don’t have to waste their time asking me for ID over something that is not illegal. I mean, Christ. I have my name all over the paper, I know the police have seen it (I personally dropped it off at the police station), and I even have contact information included.

My understanding of him is that he is a desperately lonely UMA freshman who has fallen in with a group of atheists online and this hate mail process is a bit like trying to join a gang for him.

Well, it’s not like anyone has ever thought Maloney has much understanding of anything.

Aside from being a senior (who will have a Liberal Studies degree next semester, followed by a Biology degree shortly thereafter), I find it unfortunate that Maloney is trying to ‘win’ his case by using “atheist” as if it’s a dirty word. Atheists are some of the brightest people around, especially those who are in the limelight, so I ought to be taking this as a compliment. And really, wasn’t it atheists who helped me get my blog back? Thanks again to PZ, Richard Dawkins, and all the others who sent emails of support and made anti-quack posts on their sites.

Hawkins’ whole group has targeted me as someone small enough that they can attempt to bully me.

Really? PZ Myers dealt with the whole uproar over Crackergate. Richard Dawkins is one of the most famous atheists in the world. Simon Singh, who also sent me an email, recently beat the quackery of chiropractors in the U.K. Is this really about bullying or is it just that Maloney practices quackery?

I’m not sure if they’d like me to simply shut down or to cease to exist. I have been providing them with a steady stream of medical studies supporting what I practice, but for the most part these “scientists” are more interested in swearing at me than engaging in conversation.

Here’s another instance of someone undeserving of respect demanding he be given it. It’s pathetic. Oh, and Dr. Steven Novella had a pretty good take down of all those studies Maloney was abusing.

Christopher – you are just going through all the CAM logical fallacies, aren’t you.

Now you are playing – I have bad evidence, but so does regular medicine.

There is simply no comparison. We have already demonstrated that your ability to asses the evidence is incompetent, and you have not answered any of the direct questions. You cited irrelevant research, and you partially quoted an abstract drawing the wrong conclusion. You might as well just make it up.

The level of evidence for elderberry and garlic is so slight that the reliability is close to zero – this is almost as good as no evidence at all.

You cannot defend your position, so you trot out all the canards against mainstream medicine.

And to answer Maloney’s curiosity, we would like you to shut down. Your existence is okay.

I have been unimpressed by the level of scientific knowledge displayed and find myself having to explain the basics of medical research.

Again, Mr. Novella:

Christopher,

You are making excuses. There is not a difference between practice and science – practice should be based upon science. You simply cannot really know what works without scientific evidence. It is naive hubris to think otherwise.

Update: I guess I missed some more lies.

(Series of unfunny junk written without a bit of irony.)

Maloney also posted that on Pharyngula. Here is a rather succinct response.

No, the Qwackster is not a Poe. Just an idjit. Somehow, he thinks he becoming an authority via his repetative posts, so we will believe his malarky. That isn’t working, and he looks more desparate and deluded with each post. If he had even a smidgeon of intelligence he would just fade into the bandwidth, and quit wasting his time.

Double update: PZ has a new post.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

The reasonableness of absolute uncertainty

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Michael

One of the complaints raised over a recent post came from my presumption that the phrase “There’s probably no God” is one way to describe atheistic thought. I’ve expanded on that idea in the past, so I didn’t feel it necessary to discuss it in my recent post (plus it was besides the point I happened to be making). But more than that, the notion seems so simple.

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins actually spends more time than should be necessary on the point of how to define atheism. He creates a 7 point scale where a “1” is an absolute believer, someone with no doubt in the existence of God, and a “7” is the polar opposite, an absolutely certain atheist. In the middle are varying levels of belief or disbelief. Dawkins places himself as a “6”, describing himself as nearly certain there are no gods, but allowing for the possibility, however slim it may be. This is how a huge swath of atheists also describe themselves. (It’s at the root of some of the messages being put out on the bus campaigns, in fact.)

The complaint to this is the belief that atheism means absolute certainty. What requires this? The word means “without theism”. That does not imply certainty of what is true, but rather a degree of certainty of what is not true. In modern connotations, the term includes a rejection of deism and usually anything supernatural. But how does this rise to become certainty?

Many people, for whatever reason, insist that any lack of certainty thus equals agnosticism. There are two issues with this. First, no, it doesn’t. Atheism, again, does not require certainty. Second, the only way one can arrive at this conclusion is to use the modern connotations of atheism. The problem comes when the connotations of agnosticism are then ignored, ever so conveniently. That is, the fact that atheism is usually taken to mean a complete rejection of all things supernatural is employed, but then the fact that agnosticism is usually taken to mean a 50/50 uncertainty is ignored. This is why Dawkins needed his scale. Few people are right in the middle (“4”). Most of us lean one way or the other. In fact, I hope a majority of people do not categorize themselves as “1”, pretending as if they’re absolutely certain of their God’s existence. We should all have doubt; the lack of it is a mark of fundamentalism.

In essence, the argument that atheism is absolute certainty is a blatantly dishonest one. If the term means absolute certainty, then it cannot be ignored that agnosticism usually means a perfect middle ground. It is bad form to ground an argument in cherry-picked connotations; in this case, demanding a self-proclaimed atheist call himself “agnostic” due to a lack of 100% certainty is weak because the common notion of a 50/50 split for agnostics is being ignored – clearly the self-proclaimed atheist is not 50/50 on the existence of gods. This would be like demanding that anyone who says unicorns are possible must also believe the mythical beasts have a 50/50 shot of existing. Of course unicorns are possible – and everyone should acknowledge that fact – but they are exceedingly unlikely. And more importantly, there is not a shred of evidence for their existence. This does not make anyone agnostic towards unicorns except in the strictest, most semantic, most useless sense.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: , , , , | 11 Comments »

Where are these boundaries anyway?

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Michael

Believers are often railing that atheism, and especially Richard Dawkins, goes beyond the bounds of science in its claims. What is never actually articulated is how. How does atheism go beyond these bounds?

But that other comment about going “beyond the boundaries of science” is a curious one. Where? I think that when you invoke an invisible, undetectable ghost in the sky who diddles quanta or turns into a man who raises the dead, then you are going beyond the boundaries of science. When someone points out that there is no evidence of such activities, that the claims of supernaturalists are contradictory and unreasonable, or explains that the material claims of priests are fair game for critical examination, they are actually operating entirely within the domain of science.

Atheism is not science, but as I’ve said in the past, it reflects the essence of science.

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science. ~Gary Zukav

While Zukav is otherwise uninteresting, his quote is concise and spot on. The onus is on the positive claimant to show his evidence. This is why the common comparison of God and gods to gnomes and unicorns is so apt; atheism is a rejection of certain claims which have no proof.

Of course, an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But an absence of what should be present is evidence of absence. This is just common sense we use all the time; if a prosecutor claims John shot his friend but there is no bullet hole in the friend and there hasn’t been time for anything to heal, then that is evidence that John never did shoot his friend. Faith, the basis for all religious belief, is not good enough here. It’s laughable.

To put it another way,

If Susie tells us she stopped a train in its tracks a la Superman, we would rightfully demand some real evidence of this (assuming we didn’t outright reject her claim as obviously false). We would even call Susie’s claim impossible. But that isn’t to actually say it is impossible. In theory, at least, it could have happened. All the atoms which made up the train could have spontaneously disassembled in a manner consistent with how they would have been altered had Superman actually been standing in front of the train. Of course, there is a huge difference between something being possible and something being plausible. This scenario fits the former while falling far short of the latter.

Atheism is much the same.

Atheism does not violate any boundaries of science (though it is not required to fall within a scientific purview to be true); instead it is a reflection of science. It is not built upon superstition or faith or unevidenced claims. Atheism is a rational view of reality which does not overstep anything. In fact, it embraces particular bounds – the bounds of human knowledge. “There probably is no God” perfectly reflects current human knowledge because, to date, there is no evidence for any gods. None. Let that sink in. It isn’t that the evidence is disparate, poorly argued or presented, poorly collected or organized…no. No, it’s that there is no evidence for any supernatural being. It cannot, with any respect for reason, be asserted that atheism is the boundary-stomping culprit here. Atheism is a standing demand for evidence as a result of a standing lack of reason, rationality, knowledge, and, well, evidence.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Hilarious attack on Dawkins

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Michael

This article by Melanie Phillips about the recent atheist convention in Australia is hilarious not because she has a stinging wit or sharp tongue, but rather because it’s just…just so silly.

LIKE revivalists from an alternative universe, 2500 hardcore believers in the absence of religion packed into the Global Atheists Convention in Melbourne last weekend to give a hero’s welcome to the high priest of belief in unbelief, Richard Dawkins.

This reminds me of when Christopher Maloney went about spamming the Internet, calling PZ Myers a “Reverend” (complete with quotation marks for some reason). The difference here is that Phillips is aware of the irony of her term “high priest” (Maloney didn’t seem to know who PZ was at all). But with the normal flea-ish weakness of the rest of her post, she may actually think she’s made some grand point.

This was even after (or perhaps because) he referred to the Pope as a Nazi, which managed to combine defamation of the pontiff with implicit Holocaust denial.

Dawkins called Pope Pious XII, not the current pope, a Nazi. (Although he could have said the same of the current pope – it would be disingenuous, but accurate. At any rate, he said it of a past pope – and the lack of action on the part of the Catholic Church in WW2 should not be ignored.)

For someone who has made a career out of telling everyone how much more tolerant the world would be if only religion were obliterated from the human psyche, Dawkins manages to appear remarkably intolerant towards anyone who disagrees with him.

It’s sad that so many people seem unable to tell the difference between non-acceptance and intolerance. How is Dawkins suppressing others views? How is he making it harder to practice religion (other than through argumentation)? What restrictions is he placing upon anyone’s beliefs?

While he was writing about the “selfish gene” and the “blind watchmaker”, he received a respectful reception even from those who might have disagreed with him but were nevertheless impressed by the imaginative brio and dazzling fluency of his argument. But then he left biology behind and became the self-appointed universal crusader against God.

So Dawkins stopped writing about science and biology in 1986? He hasn’t written multiple other books, made several science DVDs, been on who knows how many panels, explained the basis of biology countless times, or recently written a book on the evidence for evolution? Is the 2006 publication of The God Delusion retroactive? I’m not sure why Phillips would want to say wrong things.

He became the apostle of scientism, the ideology that says everything in the universe has a materialist explanation and must answer to the rules of empirical scientific evidence

The former is called naturalism, the latter a strawman.

As for Dawkins’s claim that religion is responsible for the ills of the world, this is demonstrably a wild distortion. Some of the worst horrors in human history – the French revolutionary terror, Nazism, communism – have been atheist creeds.

First, the possessive apostrophe needs not that extra “s”. Second, what part of atheism leads to such varied histories? Why is atheism the same as capitalism and socialism? I don’t understand this argument.

And although terrible things indeed have been done in the name of religion, the fact remains that Christianity and the Hebrew Bible form the foundation stone of Western civilisation and its great cause of human equality and freedom.

Except for all those nasty misogynistic bits. Oh, and all the parts about slavery and other minor jazz like that.

Just why is he so angry and why does he hate religion so much? After all, as many religious scientists can attest, science and religion are – contrary to his claim – not incompatible at all.

Oh. People can think things are compatible? It must be true.

A clue lies in his insistence that a principal reason for believing that there could be no intelligence behind the origin of life is that the alternative – God – is unthinkable.

That piece of crap Expelled movie ends with an interview where Dawkins bends over backwards to say, yes, aliens could have done it. And he goes to length in numerous other places to spell out that some divine creator could be at work. But to go further with these possibilities, he asks for evidence. He’s a real stickler about that stuff.

And so the great paradox is that the arch-hater of religious intolerance himself behaves with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist and, despite excoriating religion for stifling debate, does this in spades.

…what? Dawkins does not argue that religion stifles debate. The debate is about religion. It might stifle scientific discussion because it is an antithetical distraction, but where are all these arguments Phillips keeps attributing to Dawkins?

I don’t understand why someone would want to lie like this. Why isn’t Phillips honest? Why does she make things up? Is she doing it for fun? Does she hate honesty? Does she think of herself as clever? Why would she think that? Is she on some sort of medication? I don’t understand how people come to think the sort of string of words people like Phillips put together is worthwhile.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Religions | Tagged: , , , , , , | 52 Comments »

Yet another Symphony of Science

Posted on February 25, 2010 by Michael

This one includes some familiar and some new ‘singers’ (including someone without a penis for the first time in the series): Michael Shermer, Jacob Bronowski, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Jill Tarter, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Feynman, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Carolyn Porco, and PZ Myers.

(Whoops. As a commenter pointed out, Jane Goodall was in the last one. But this one has two women, so, uh, there.)

Filed under: Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Open your eyes

Posted on January 24, 2010 by Michael

Filed under: Science | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

The Irish Blasphemy Law

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Michael

An Irish law against blasphemy goes into effect today.

It defines blasphemy as “publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted”.

It’s clearly absurd. Ireland is seeking to protect (bad) ideas and no individuals. It’s obvious that those who crafted this piece of abhorrent tyranny have no concept of personal liberty.

Fortunately, Atheist Ireland has published 25 blasphemous quotes. It seems they do have a good idea of what it means to have any liberty at all. Here are some of the better quotes.

I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists. ~Bjork

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. ~Richard Dawkins

(If defamation of religion was illegal) it would be a crime for me to say that the notion of transubstantiation is so ridiculous that even a small child should be able to see the insanity and utter physical impossibility of a piece of bread and some wine somehow taking on corporeal form. It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other. ~Ian O’Doherty

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, News, Religions | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Thought of the day

Posted on November 26, 2009 by Michael

You apparently don’t understand what randomness means. ‘A bias in the probability’ of something is pretty much exactly what we mean by non-random. Throwing dice is proverbially a random process. If you throw a die a thousand times, you expect to get a series of random numbers. If a particular die was biased towards, say, even numbers, it would deliver a non-random series of numbers. If natural selection is a bias in the probability of reproduction with respect to phenotype, that is equivalent to saying it is non-random. Do you really seriously not understand that?

~Richard Dawkins

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 6 Comments »

Article on Dawkins

Posted on October 4, 2009 by Michael

I’m swamped in Marine Biology, Human Nutrition, Genetics, some philosophy and other areas of study this weekend, so cheapo-posts will have to do. Here is an article about Richard Dawkins I found enlightening.

So he is genuinely puzzled by people calling him aggressive. “Well, I’m nothing like as aggressive as I’m portrayed. And I’m always being labelled ‘strident’. In the bestseller lists it always has a little one-line summary of the book, and for my new one it says ‘strident academic Richard Dawkins’. I’m forever saddled with this wretched adjective. I think I’m one of the most unstrident people in the world. I’d like to think my books are humorous at points,” he adds, pensively. “I’d like to think people laugh when they read them.”

And when asked about who may read them,

So finally I have to ask him, does he honestly think any creationists will read it?

“Hardline, mind-made-up creationists, no. But there are lots of people, people who think they are creationists but who haven’t thought about it very hard, people who grew up in some religion or other, who are just beginning to question what they were taught. And all of a sudden they are reading about evolution and saying, wait a minute, this makes sense. I get a lot of letters from people thanking me, saying, ‘You’ve changed my life.’ That is very, very gratifying.” So you have actually converted people? “Well, for example, I was at one point teaching in Oxford, and we had an animal-behaviour student who was a creationist from some out-of-the-way Bible college in America. He came dutifully to all my lectures, every week, and after the last lecture, he came down to the desk where I was packing up my notes and he said, ‘Gee, this evolution, it really makes sense!’ So yes, yes, I do believe that people can change their minds, be convinced by the truth. And I thought, yes, that’s what I’m here for.”

Filed under: Evidence, Evolution | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Dawkins on Colbert

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Michael

Richard Dawkins will be appearing on The Colbert Report tonight at 11:30 / 10:30 Central.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

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