1. Origins - The BIG Questions: 2008 Skeptics Society Conference

Comment #255064 by mjosef on September 26, 2008 at 7:48 pm

I am glad that there is a groundswell of opposition to Michael Shermer, who is a pro-Bush, pro- corporate, neo-con charlatan. He is about as much a "skeptic" as P.T. Barnum was an educator. Read his latest ode to Ayn Rand fascism, and then wonder why the likes of Richard Dawkins and these tenured whoevers keep associating with this fellow. Of course Shermer's now connected with Templeton. Of course he's Dinesh's co-conspirator. Of course he's going to edge atheism away from any public integrity.

2. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #178272 by mjosef on May 11, 2008 at 4:12 am

This is getting tiresome. Why is Prof. Dawkins wasting time with such morons as these clowns Boteach and D'Souza? I called out Prof. Dawkins before on his enduring association with Michael Shermer, who is a great friend of d'Souza, and so now I wonder if they are all in this little club together. When you choose to debate someone, you validate their commensurate station. When you choose to associate, you become allied. When Prof. Dawkins poses as if being "calm and civilized" is all there is, you trivialize the nature of debate. The British Empire believed itself calm and civilized and rational, and yet look at all that it killed in the name of itself.

3. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165907 by mjosef on April 22, 2008 at 3:06 pm

To Roland F., posting at about 165615:
I made a longer comment, but I don't know if it got lost or what.
My quotes are directly from Shermer's book. Take just one, page 12: "Markets are moral, and modern economies are founded on our virtuous nature."
I find this nonsense in the realm of "Bell Curve" absurd, and I find Dawkins' association with Shermer, self-confessed idolator of Reagan, Milton Friedman, George Will, Google, absolutely stupefying. Dawkins and Shermer have, by Shermer's account in the book, talked extensively over these matters. Just what on earth did Dawkins say in response to any of this poppycock?

4. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165531 by mjosef on April 21, 2008 at 3:14 pm

This is in response to a comemnt a long while back by Roland F. First, Shermer is not just relaying a message about the wonderfulness of the current economy - he explicitly states his fondness for how "moral" it is, how this alleged "unseen hand" is a factual and powerful as "natural selection." His attempts a providing some sort of balance to himself are not exactly ruggedly self-questioning. This is absolute claptrap, to think that this dismal world of mega-rich satraps cavorting with unearned tax breaks stepping over starving children in their communities is somehow "natural," "evolutionary" - this is completely dangerous, inhuman thinking, from someone trying to steep his extreme "libertarian" twaddle in "skepticism" or "rationality" labels. To have Mr. Dawkins now bathing this man Mr. Shermer, confidante to one of the henchmen to the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II-III, in awe and reverence is fraudulent, and if Mr. Dawkins wishes to recover his integrity in my eyes, he can try to explain how you pervert "science" into justifications for neo-fascism. That's all I'm asking, that's all - but if you like the current state of affairs, and like atheism to stand for absolutely nothing that smacks of actual political worth, then go with Shermer, Alan Greenspan, PJ. O'Rourke, Rush Limbaugh - maybe Mr. Dawkins wants to call them "kind and decent" also.

5. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165072 by mjosef on April 21, 2008 at 3:02 am

I understand this is a side issue to the posts here, but a few people mentioned the "unseen hand" nonsense peddled by Shermer, who Dawkins now endorses as a "kind and decent man." So I'll call out our hero Dawkins again: do you endorse the vicious twaddle that sees the stupefyingly endorsed machinations of the manipulated, in-no-way-free market as inherently "moral," as Shermer does? Can "evolutionary economics" be now the inheritor of the eugenics movement?

6. Interviews with Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer

Comment #164495 by mjosef on April 20, 2008 at 10:36 am

Thanks, Jayday for your good response. first, I know that Shermer has done good and honorable work in fighting against the specious claims of the Holocaust deniers and the 9/11 "Loose Change" and Intelligent Design pseudo-science crowds. All the more reason that it was extremely disappointing to hear him completely on the other side of evidence and rationality when it comes to economic fairness. This in not a minor topic, it in fact underlies all of what I call the supersystem, this on-going appropriation of all power by neo-con and neo-liberal elites. And so that brings me to the pooh-poohing of any "association" between the esteemed Richard Dawkins and Shermer, who actually had a "debate" with this D'Souza scourge who extravagantly blurbed his book - did they let the crowd in on that? Now, Dawkins can use his atheist platform, well and truly earned, to advance good causes, or he can sit down, break bread, sit on the board for, people who exemplify and extoll the wanton destruction of our economy. Why do we shy away from asking those with celebrity credibility from being somewhat responsible for maintaining integrity? What is the purpose of becoming learned if this enlightenment cannot address the most fundamental questions of ethics and morality, as in how can a society drive the terrible gaps between rich and poor and between middle-class and mega-rich, even deeper? I'll end with a simple request - let Mr. Dawkins read the Shermer book "Mind of the Market," and then tell the world he either endorses or rejects the premises, or doesn't give a damn either way. I respect your description of your motivation to to find skeptical people who line up with you on major points, but you do have to stay true to your principles, not back down from charlatans, and find some way to reject ignorance.

7. Interviews with Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer

Comment #164322 by mjosef on April 20, 2008 at 4:15 am

To Jayday, this is a very important issue, and I would put Ricahrd Dawkins very squarely on the line here for his association with Mr. Shermer. In his latest book, "The Mind of the Market," Shermer makes preposterous claims that the market is "moral," that the Unseen Hand is as inevitable and wonderful as natural selection, that everything is all right and beautiful about how our "free Market" is so free and rewards rich people so well. In fact, this neo-con gibberish gets the royal thumbs up on the back cover, from, you guessed it, his great and good friend Dinesh D'Souza. After hearing Shermer, and now reading his fascist claptrap, I am very glad that I contacted a few Skeptics society board members, canceled my subscription, and will have nothing to do with this snake-oil courtier again. What about it, Richard - do you like hob-nobbing with someone so enamored of economic inequality, of Silicon Valley and its puerile mega-rich? The crowning irony is that this man alleges he is a "Skeptic," yet peddles the most credulous, faith-bound veneration of greed and profit since Ronald Reagan...

8. Christmas with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #103312 by mjosef on December 25, 2007 at 4:19 am

Thanks to the posters and to Hitchens for these Yule musings - he is absolutely right about the North Korean aspect of all of this. However, I remember Hitchens sneering about "the Left" on the Laura Ingraham (Coulter-like harridan) Show, and now he wants back in on the anti-Bush side? Hitchens said clearly in his off-the-cuff response that he agreed with Castro on very little, so if that is your pretext for now boycotting him Castletonsnob, (a snob for Castleton - what the hell is that? - then it really didn't take much, did it? To be fair to the terribly conflicted Hitchens, his post-fame responses, like that of Prof. Dawkins, are resolute and often hilarious, but in an age of Huckabee, Romney, Robertson, astrologers in Norway, homeopathic absurdity in Sweden, and various and ludicrous other evasions of rational responsibility, what's wrong with a little nihilism for the New Year's cheer?

9. Can we at least demand 'Secular Communion'?

Comment #87425 by mjosef on November 12, 2007 at 4:56 am

Fine and dandy article, PZ. Of course, to see basically my views reiterated by another fellow human is part of its appeal, but it is good to see smart, direct writing, not Harris-like quibbling and intoning. . In the "Rant and Reason" blog of humanist.org, I learned last week that "Humanism" is a "new religion," it is not atheist, and that it derives from the religious department of the University of Chicago. You can look up my earth-shattering exchange with the official Voice of "Francis" the talking AHA figurehead, in the entries "Does Size Matter" and "Atheists Need..." I am an atheist, I concluded, not an Up-With-People Unitarian "humanist", and think the only real alliances are the ones that get you sex. Otherwise, stick to your principles, bite your tongue when necessary, as another poster said, and realize that even squid are better at this than you are.

10. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75906 by mjosef on October 4, 2007 at 3:01 am

If anybody is still reading:
1. Whenever a progressive thinker starts talking about "tactics," run for the hills. Let's have a bake sale! Let's pretend we don't believe what we do, to gain converts from the ranks of the stupid!
2. Harris has said all this before, so it should not have shocked anyone, and much of it is poppycock. No to meditation's ability to teach the world to sing, and no to
3. The disinclination to use the word "atheist." What effrontery! How can anyone deny the bravery, the intellectual strength, the substance of those fellow humans who have dared throughout history to advance the cause? How can the esteemed Prof. Dawkins turn his back on the great forebears who risked their lives, risked ostracism, risked societal condemnation, to abjure theism?
4. Atheism is one hell of a start, but it is not the end. I am proud to be an atheist. It implies a basic intellectual orientation, but all the rest, of my actions, my philosophies, my affiliations, my compromises, are as individual as yours.
5. Read Michel Onfray. Harris is very much his junior, though he should be valued for his precise deconstructions of religion. Harris needs to gain some humility, which I think Dawkins has, although I worry about the professor's championing of Harris in this tempest.

11. New Rules: A Religious Test

Comment #74619 by mjosef on September 29, 2007 at 5:44 pm

In a short response to Teratorius's question of why atheism has had a recent prominence, a good sociology would note the mass secularism now practiced in Europe, connecting television, individualistic education, and, as always, the available inherent idiocy of the religious viewpoint. The books have been a great help - try Michel Onfray's book for the piece de resistance. 9/11 strengthened religion among the lost and shallow "USA AMERICANS" - absurd jingoism commingled with lunatic irrationalism.

12. Tome truths

Comment #68031 by mjosef on September 5, 2007 at 5:58 pm

Although late to this thread, I would shout out to the universe that Michel Onfray's book is stunningly good, preeminent in fact. The man is a fantastic thinker, with an incredible command of history and philosophy, yet one who writes with a marvelous accessible intensity. Onfray deserves the highest form of accolades and attention, yet he seems to get puerile dismissals and vast US inattention - his book is an education in and of itself. Take your 16 bucks out of your beer fund and buy it from Amazon - it's the best purchase you'll do for yourself this year.

13. Religion beat became a test of faith

Comment #57899 by mjosef on July 22, 2007 at 4:17 am

I guess this stuff is to be commended, but I also think that this shows that:
1. Religion is such a waste of time. All those meetings, all that inward self-castigation, all that outward piety that needs and demands such furhter wasting of so many billions of tax support.
2. Adults in America live in an intellectual vacuum. Yes, it took me two decades-plus before my in-grained independent doubt beat down my family-inherited religious bent, but here is a grown-man, educated, with access to such great repositories of information and argument, and he has to encounter fondling priests to cement the rational thought that this mass God delusion is specious and horrible? Could we intellectually challenge each other just a little more in America? Or are we so bloated with unearned riches that we refuse to use even a sliver of our minds?

14. The New Atheists

Comment #49383 by mjosef on June 11, 2007 at 5:59 pm

A broad secular coalition could also demand more nuanced discussion of the range of belief and unbelief in America today. Rather than consciously or unconsciously promoting religious belief, public opinion research should try to register a full range of beliefs, including the interesting and perplexing ways in which people live secular as well as religious lives and their sometimes contradictory combinations.

This is just pabulum. Where do we sign up for concert tickets for that "nuanced discussion"? What a rockin' good time that should be, if Americans can turn away form the TV and the cell phone and the Wal-Mart. Here's my rejoinder to the Nation's earnest liberal piety: I've had all the religious nuance a society can bloviate, and it's time to stop wasting time on nonsense. As I never get tired of quoting, Richard Dawkins wrote in TGD: "Life is too short to be concerned with one figment of the imagination and many." Aronson was condescending in here, though better than most.

15. Can we really learn to love people who aren't like us?

Comment #49024 by mjosef on June 10, 2007 at 3:17 am

Steve 99's point is an essential one. In the effort to appear "nice," good critical people give praise to people that do not deserve it. Yes, we want to appear to have some allies in the "religious humanist" front, but a Rabbi condemning gay people deserves a kick in the ass on his way out of the door.

16. Should Science Speak to Faith? A dialog between Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins

Comment #47481 by mjosef on June 4, 2007 at 4:29 pm

Three important points, to my mind, in overall defense of the Dawkins camp: 1. The esteemed and kindly E.O. Wilson has called, in a recent interview, Richard Dawkins the leader of the "military wing" of the secular humanists. Without rancor, but still peeved, I beg to differ. Dawkins is not a militarist, in any sense. As a metaphor, this does not work. The "new atheists" have no army, have fired no guns, seek intellectual honesty and rigor, and are not Panthers, nor Weathermen, nor violence-addled sadists like Republicans. 2. At the "New Humanists" Harvard confab (glad I missed the event), an award for "Humanist Record of the Year" went to wailer-strummer Dar Williams, who though directly supportive of various "humanist" causes, said in a podcast that she believes in God. Fantastic. Who the hell picked her for this absurd designation - what could possibly make her effort an "Humanist Album of the Year" if it was written by one smitten, as a mature adult, by the God Delusion? 3. In the book, Dawkins writes, "Life is too short to bother with one figment of the imagination and many." So why waste more time trying to lower down to the "faith" level? Religious "faith" is where we as humans start to go way, way wrong...

17. Sam Harris Strikes Back

Comment #46255 by mjosef on May 30, 2007 at 5:08 pm

So, religious people "don't believe in an anthropomorphic God," but rather in God as "what gives their lives meaning," according to Hedges. What utter nonsense - how can an experienced journalist utter such nonsensical, errant sociology? God is nothing but "anthropomorphic" in the personal God/personal savior/God the Father self-love I've heard throughout my US lifetime. How can any listen to such tripe? Harris has his neo-Buddhist weaknesses, but he is to be given medals for going after the powerful, enfranchised, well-heeled "moderates" like the now-disgraced Hedges, who nonetheless has done a bang-up job detailing his American fascist cohort. Can Harris try on Bill McKibben next?