Earlier this week the individual calling himself the amazing atheist, known for regularly ranting against the doctrine of feminism for its anti-human-rights philosophy and its religious adherence to a set of ideological dogmas managed to shit the bed while debating a feminist on the online forum of reddit.
After this feminist attempted to claim moral superiority by announcing herself as a victim of rape, the amazing atheist, or TJ as he's also know quite stupidly told her he'd rape her with his fist, and heaped other abuse and insults on top of this.
As a consequence, a substantial segment of the online community have justifiably thrown TJ under the bus. It is possible that the argumentative feminist he was addressing was in fact an actual victim of rape, and not just playing the victim card for it's trump value. Even in the assumption that she was fabricating a story, the rhetorical threat offered by the amazing atheist was awfully foolish, made more surprising that he is a long term veteran of online argument. I expected him to know better, and to conduct himself better, im sure others did to.
However, Im not here to beat up on the amazing atheist, but im coving this ground to provide context.
Seeing an opportunity, the religious leader queezy lynchmob decided to gather the villagers, collect together torches and pitchforks and place himself at the head of the inquisition, denouncing this offensive blasphemer against holy writ.
Interestingly, our champion of the faith , professor Queezy is a professor of biology at university of Minnesota Morris, and considered by some as a prominent advocate of rationality. And this is where things get a bit gluey. Certainly, the professor wasted no time placing himself at the head of the mob with an article titled: The not-so-Amazing Atheist self-immolates.
In this piece, he does what almost any skilled rhetorician with an axe to grind would do, and that's tear TJ a new orifice. Im not going to pretend TJ didnt deserve it, and the rhetoric used to do so is effective. Professor lynchmob characterizes TJ's technique as very ugly, and recommends to his readers that he doesnt recommend a reading. However, like many pundits in the pulpit, the professor proceeds to quote TJ's choicest and most offensive missteps, just to make sure nobody missed any.[1]
This is where I come to a question. As a high profile professor of biology, and prominent proponent of rationality, isn't stooping to partizan engagement in online shit-slinging matches between un-credentialed ideologues below professor’s weight class , and frankly, dignity?
I cannot say for certain, but I have never seen professor Dawkins lower himself or insert himself into what amounts to taunting matches between the laity, even when such contests revolve around evolutionary biology, or atheistic humanism - the fields of expertise and interest to both Dawkins and Professor Meyers.
I have also never seen Dan Dennett or Sam Harris do any such thing. Even the unfortunately departed Christopher Hitchens, boisterously argumentative as he was did not insert himself into squabbles between his inferiors, even when the squabble's subject was something he has a strong opinion on.
Professor Myers, it appears, is not limited this consideration – and I will freely grant that my layman's esteem for a professor of biology may encompass some mistaken understanding.
Since that episode of internet forum insult exchange Professor Meyers, has addressed other topics, and made a strong statement in which I find myself in strong agreement with him.
On Februray 6 he posted a blog entry titled “Dear Jezebel”[2] in which he quite rightly criticized the editors of jezebel dot com for their sadly mawkish enthusiasm for the magical thinking needed to believe in homeopathic medicine.
This is medicine diluted to a point where statistically, no molecules of the purportedly active ingredient remain, due to repeated dilution to the point of having a mixture of nothing but water.
In his rebuttal of this quackery, Meyers said the following: “It's the people who try to justify everything with their biases and gut feelings and falsified opinions that have gotten us in our current mess.”
And I couldn't agree more.
However, what I find perplexing, even frustrating is how a scientist and a rationalist can say this in the same blog posting in which he defends a religious ideology with an earned reputation for advocacy research, censure of nonconforming view, repeated re-use of multiply debunked false claims and a stunningly callous dismissal of human damage to non-adherents of the dogma, and to those with a Y chromosome.
Callous disregard for human damage as exemplified in Catherine Commins' infamous statement in which she said:
Men who are unjustly accused of rape "have a lot of pain, but it is not a pain that I would necessarily have spared them." That quotation, by the way, if considered within it's full context is not better, its worse, however, for brevity's sake ill leave it alone for now.
And what about repeated re-use of multiply debunked claims of fact.
The 1 in 4 women are raped myth, first reported in the translucently dishonest advocacy research of Mary Koss, who counted her survey subjects as victims when they did not count themselves as such.
Koss's 1 in 4 number has been endlessly recycled, despite the deeply faulty methodology in obtaining it, and in recent memory, proponents of the narrative of omnipresent rape have demonstrated their sloppy disregard for data by blurring that already false claim from 1 in 4 to 1 in 3.
Christina Hoff Sommers, when speaking before a live audience on the domestic violence grievance industry, ( whose operatives are the repeaters of so many of feminism's false facts ) said during her presentation:
“We’re not talking about a few errors, we’re not talking about occasional lapses, we’re talking about a body of egregiously false information at the heart of the domestic violence movement. False claims are pervasive. False claims are not the exception, they are the rule.”
Dr Murray Strauss, a professor of sociology and the co-director of the family research laboratory of durham new hampshire published a paper in 2007 called
How feminists corrupt DV research[3] , and in that paper Professor Stauss detailed seven principal methods used to maintain a factually false narrative of uniquely male perpetration of partner violence.
This is systematic fraud within an ideology which only escapes universal classification as a religion because it lacks a supernatural being in the center of it's dogma.
According to Professor Meyers:
"There's a reason I promote atheism and skepticism coupled with feminism, and it's not because I'm trying to foist a feminist ideology on skepticism. It's because skepticism drives me to consider discrimination and injustice as wrong, not just in an abstract moral sense, but unjustifiable and invalid."
Okay, but what about discrimination and injustice done against somebody other than women, systematically accross a culture – measurable by death rates, differential sentancing in courts, rates of violent criminal victimization and institutional discrimination in education, employment, family court, and increasingly, in law.
Or does discrimination and injustice only count when it impacts who the culture in it's cool-aid drinking assumption deems a victim demographic.
"It's the people who try to justify everything with their biases and gut feelings and falsified opinions that have gotten us in our current mess."
When Professor Myers wrote those words, he was talking about the muddy thinking and outright woo-woo which accompanies quackery like homeopathic medicine, but it could equally apply to bronze age mythology still clung to by twenty first century humans.
You wrote those words Reverend Myers, and when I read them its apparent they also apply to the religion of feminism. That ideology whose proponents do not tolerate dissent or nonconforming data.
[1] http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/02/08/the-not-so-amazing-atheist-self-immolates/
[2] http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/02/dear_jezebel.php
[3] http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/how-feminists-corrupt-dv-research/
