A Whole Lot About Mostly Nothing

Oh my. Lovely.

You get the feeling that they are genuinely surprised to find that Catholics are attaching far more importance to the descration of the Eucharist than, say, the desecration of a Rosary. They seem to have reeled a bit at the volcanic response. Now they are getting their footing and realizing this *really* ticks off Catholics and so, like eight year olds, they are enjoying being in (they think) the position of saying, “Take one step closer and I’ll torture your cat!”

I won’t mince words. Myers is an evil man. (I won’t go that far, but he is an asshat of the first water and engaging in evil acts.-ed) And as evil men, particularly evil intellectuals, tend to be, he is also a mad man as are most of his acolytes and followers. One need only read Pharyngula to know this. Not all atheists are driven mad by their atheism. Many are quite respectable human beings. But those who make it their raison d’etre tend to be made crazy by it. That’s the tragedy of sins of the intellect. They don’t just make you stupid. If you persist in them, and particularly if you persist in them to this degree, they make you crazy.

(snip)

The hatred breeds lies like, “I’m just exercising freedom of expression”.

No. You are committing theft, vandalism, and incitement.

Or else you lie and say, “Unless Catholics can prove the Eucharist is actually the Body and Blood of Christ and not a worthless cracker, I’m just guilty of being rude.”

No. Catholics are under no obligation to prove that in order to show that you are guilty of theft, vandalism and incitement.

(snip)
Yet another demented lie to cover up your naked act of aggression is to play the victim:

It’s just so darned weird that they’re demanding that I offer this respect to a symbol that means nothing to me.

The answer to this lie is that *nobody* is demanding Myers offer respect to the Eucharist. He’s blasphemed the Eucharist on his blog off and on since forever. Catholics are free to disagree with him, just has he is free to disagree with them. That’s the first amendment in action and I, for one, am glad to live in the land that is not Canada where even demented professors whose careers are stuck in Wilbur Weed Boxtop Diploma Mill can have a voice in the public square, if only to serve as a warning to normal people of what hatred of God can do to the human mind.

(snip)

Myers’ logic is that of Kristallnacht, punish all Catholics everywhere with theft, vandalism and incitement because of the (alleged) actions of a couple.

OoohWEE!! Read it all. Wonderful.

ALSO, a a great round-up at The Daily Kraken.

Kevin Jones also thinks PZ is an asshat and deserves reprimand, at least.

UPDATE: Somewhat interesting combox exchange at Mark’s with some of the more lucid Pharyngulites.

It is instructive to note that even these calmer people toss out “challenging” questions -as if no one has ever thought of them before- and are then directed to consult proper Gospel commentaries.  And guess what?  All they do is re-phrase the question, and suggest that our lack of actual response indicates sure evidence that the Church is bogus.

In part cause he says that he absolutely intends to follow through on his desecration.

The man reminds me of a rabid homophobe who has secret homosexual tendencies.  The more he raves at the object of his secret obsession, the safer he feels.

Minnesota Indy interview (full of softball questions.  The comments are typical, though tjswift is hilarious.

Anchoress.

Cartago Delenda Est.

Frances Beckwith here and here.

Catholic League news release.

Fox News on the original foofaraw that got PZ’s panties all in a bunch.

Washington Times.

Fr. James Martin in America.

Then PZ went and posted all the public information on a couple of lintheads who sent him evil threatening e-mails.  PZ ended up taking them down, because his sycophants went crazy on the lintheads.  PZ re-wrote the post, with this classic quote:

It is most definitely not intended to incite harassment. I do not want you to be dunning these people with email, threatening them back, signing them up for spam, or otherwise being a jerk. For one thing, we can’t be certain that an innocent’s account hasn’t been hijacked; for another, we’re supposed to be better than that.

Res Ipsa Loquitur.  They cannot be better; philosophically, logically, they are acting exactly as they should; with malice and venom.  PZ knew that was going to happen, and he simply didn’t care.  Orac, another ScienceBlogs writer, took PZ to task on this idiotic action of his with great charity:

What on earth did you expect, P.Z., posting the e-mails and the entire headers?

Clearly you didn’t think things through.

Posted by: Orac | July 14, 2008 4:57 PM

But he did.  PZ is a sanctimonious, hypocritical asshat, a fundamentalist prophet of the Church of Atheism, but he is not stupid.  He knew what would happen.

Anyway, there is more, much more, more than one could possibly care to stomach over at Pharyngula, but those can be searched for by others.

I for one, am very curious to see exactly what he does to commit sacrilege to the Eucharist.  Not for any real harm that can come to Christ; I am confident that He can take care of Himself.  No, I am more curious to see how it further illustrates PZ’s consistent, pathological hatred (that word is used carefully) of religion, particularly Christianity.

(link). . .and Dawkins runs to his aid. (Beckwith claims that Pharyngula has been taken down, but as of the time stamp on this post, that is incorrect. PZ is still blathering full bile ahead.)

Mark Shea says it best:

The guy’s a bag lady screaming at the traffic–on the Minnesota taxpayer’s dime. Tell me again what the hell any of this has to do with science?

All this has spurred on a perfect storm of imbecilic comments (from BOTH sides) all over Myers’ pestiferous blog.  More than I have ever seen.  Illiterate commentary espousing violence from putative Catholics makes for a lousy witness (not that PZ would ever actually pay attention to a witness example, but that doesn’t absolve us from the responsibility to try), and the sanctimonious responses from Myers’ Sycophantic Horde is no better.

And that’s all I’m going to say on this. Res ipsa loquitur.

Seems that Obama is considering expanding the faith-based initiatives started by GW Bush. Right now, this is the ONLY thing about Obama that I can stand. I still won’t vote for the guy, though. However, what might cause me to vote for the Obamanator is the possibility of watching noted atheist moron PZ Myers’s head explode, as the committed Democrat will have to hold his nose and vote for a politician that -in terms of lip service, at least- is in favor of expanding aid to religious institutions.

He’s still proposing an expansion of Bush’s faith-based initiatives — he’s going to be handing out billions of dollars to religious organizations. It’s nice that he’s specifically saying there will be restrictions, that the money can’t be used in programs that discriminate, and it must be for secular purposes, but he’s still propping up a religious middleman between government aid and the people, and that’s a tool that will be used to proselytize indirectly, even if they don’t simply flout the rules. This is a bad idea.

Well, it’s a bad idea only when you’re an atheist nutjob who sees radical religious conspiracies under every collection plate. WHEN will this bearded blowhard come to terms with his fear of God? If he will simply admit that he is terrified that his Lutheran upbringing was possibly correct, then he can come to terms with it like a good Freudian misfit, and live his life out in fearful quiet in the wilds of Minnesota.

Ain’t likely.

So, as a consolation, I do get to see him become agitated about this Obama/faith-based initiative sop to the religious of America. Twill be amusing to watch PZ get all atwitter about this. NOTHING else at this point is worth paying attention to in this wretched election year.

On the left, Richard Dawkins. On the right, PZ Myers (picture brought to you from the Sixth Circle of Dante’s Inferno.)

(They are) curiously limited. (They are) mechanic(s) of the brain. (They have) cut it to pieces with (their) scalpels and found no soul. Therefore there is none. Like the Russian astronauts who circled the earth and did not see God. It is the empiricism of the mechanic, and a mechanic is only a child with superior motor control.

-Dr. Sam Weizak from Stephen King’s Dead Zone.

Those brainless f***buckets at Pharyngula and Pandagon are at it again.

PZ, on the Texas, FLDS nightmare:

Here, let me ruin your morning, just in case you hadn’t already heard the story of this raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

(snip)

I think “fundamentalist” has become a synonym for “misogynistic pedophile”.

/Irony/ Nope. No generalities here. /Irony

What an asshole. Yes. In the cosmology of Herr Doktor Myers, if one is a “conservative” Christian, one therefore must:

1. Hate women, and
2. Have deep urges to mate with younger members of the species.

Well, last I checked, being a conservative Catholic (note: Quick test to determine this. If you think Pope Benedict is mostly a good guy and the idea of Catholic universities ought to, well, you know, teach basic Catholic doctrine, you too are a conservative Catholic) means I’m a conservative Christian.

In PZ’s book, that means I’m a “fundie.”

Which then means I must hate women and lust after kids.

I’ll say it again: What an asshole.

As for my misogyny, ask my co-workers, who for nearly 20 years have been women. Ask my wife. I doubt highly any of them will suggest that I am a misogynist.

As for my incipient pedophilia according to Herr Doktor Myers, bad news. Almost 18 years working with kids grade K-12, and you know what? I’ve managed to keep my hands off of ALL of them.

It’s easy, really. The very concept of pedophilia frankly grosses me out. Besides that , I still lust after my wife, and that keeps me fully occupied, thank you very much. Perhaps Herr Doktor Myers knows something about Jimmy Carter’s “lusting in the heart” that I do not. But I don’t want the details if he does.

But I must then be a liberal. Herr Doktor Myers’ theory demands that this be so.

Hmm. Fucked up in the basic computations, Herr Doktor. Back to the fantasyland mill drawing board.

Meanwhile, there is Amanda the Berserk:

like all the other little empires Warren Jeffs has built, it’s a religious patriarchy taken to its logical conclusion, i.e. built around the practice of raping underage girls. (bold by ed)

So, I guess the Pope all along has been lusting in his heart to build little compounds to rape little girls. What absolute fever-swamp idiocy.

She blathers on:

Considering that atheists supposedly have our own fundamentalists, I’m sure any day now we’ll find out that Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are running rape farms where they swap daughters with their friends because Darwin told them they have a right.

Frankly, I would not normally expect this of Dawkins and Harris, but I would not at all be surprised that some of the more lunatic fringe of their particular stripe in fact WOULD think that is a good idea. In fact, some already do.

But the question that PZ raises—why does it always come back to misogyny and pedophilia with religious nuts who push it too far?

PZ didn’t raise a question, Sister Moonbat. He was talking out of his ass. I think he was about 50% serious when he wrote that. You of course take it all too seriously.

Now, of course, most fundie Christians don’t slide towards polygamy, because there are laws and rules and restrictions against it.

What.

A.

Bitch.

SHE can make it appear my “misogyny” is being raised, though the fact is, I don’t hate women.

I just loathe Amanda Marcotte. If she were male, I’d be just as outraged.

It’s not the rules that forces most people -conservative or liberal, whomever- to avoid pedophilia; it’s the fact that the very idea of it is repugnant. This is especially true for conservatives. I wonder how many members of NAMBLA, who are fighting to legalize pedophilia, are registered Democrats, good, “free-thinking” liberals who desire to legalize what is deep in the hearts of all sex-sodden Democrats.

See how much fun generalities can be, you two morons?

The final irony to this is the fact that Amanda subtitles her little moronicy as part of the “Sunday Freethinker Sermon”.

Free-thinking my blue ass.

UPDATE: Then PZ, the absolute barking-mad asshole, berates some poor old guy who demolished two Porsches.

Total damage: £60,000.

So what does the senile twit say afterwards? You guessed it:

It was a miracle I got out alive and I put it down to the power of prayer and God looking after me.

Why was he praying to wreak havoc on expensive German cars?

Cars (at least Porsches, good. Old men with bad driving skills who invoke God? Bad. Myers? Asshat of the first water).

See, I haven’t read the dolt for weeks. Amanda links to him, I see what foolishness he is raving about now, and again, I go off the end.

Bastard is bad for my health.

I mean, gut-bustingly so.

But here’s the funny part:  It is Pythonesque in its approach.  Meaning, it’s poking fun at both science and religion.

Now, the ironic part is that the Brights just don’t get what it’s really about.

Look, you fools, go re-watch the first part of the video, before the rap.  You clowns are being schooled.  The rap then schools both camps.

Mark Shea has a great takedown on this.

If I could find a way to host videos on this blog, this is the first one I’d put up.  It’s devastating.

(An unfinished bit I wrote some months ago.  I decided to publish it as is, with the understanding that it will remain unfinished.)

God help the biology students at University of Minnesota-Morris. I have heard the dreaded PZ Myers lecture. Christians of the US may rest easy. The man reaches a lot of people by his idiot blog, but once you hear him speak for real, boredom and ennui rapifly settle in. The one thing that kept me going was his occasional non sequitur bleats about how there are no angels to be found in the neuro-electrical activity of the brain.

This stimulates a form of interest, the same sort that might come about after been having trapped by the resident party bore, having cornered you and droned on uninterrupted for 20 minutes about the technical aspects of his exceedingly dreary job, thereby causing you to unfocus and begin daydreaming about maybe falling asleep in front of a TV documentary on catfish harvesting; when suddenly the party bore breaks out with an previously unsuspected case of Tourette’s, cursing the hostess at the top of his lungs and loudly proclaiming her deviant sexual practices. The usual response in such a situation would be the classic, “WTF???? Where did that come from?” So too it is PZ Myers. Droningly dull blather, punctuated by the occasional, completely un-related WTF moments.

Here, in Part 1 of a talk entitled “There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain”, Myers goes on at great length, though in relatively simplistic fashion, about the basics of neurophysiology; detailing the micro-neurophysiology of neuron function, and the macro-neurophysiology of brain mapping. In between, he briefly concedes that the ground between the micro- and macro-neurophysiology, exactly how these millions upon millions of neuronal pulses leads to motor control, sensory management and manifestation of the personality. It’s really a standard primer lecture on intro to neuroscience for the layman with no previous exposure to the subject. If you can get past his enormously boring lecturing voice, I suppose it serves the purpose. There is no doubt that Myers has a firm grasp of the science involved.

But the Tourette’s style, WTF moments come right after he gets done detailing the micro-neurophysiology, and again after outlining the macro-neurophysiology. In both cases, he then mutters, apropos of nothing, “See? There are no angels to be found here. It can all be explained through materialistic means.”

Why would we expect there to be angels involved there?

(It pays to keep in mind that he is addressing a meeting of the Minnesota Atheists; and his expectation is to prove through his lecture on neuroscience that there is no God. He has a audience loaded with sycophants who will nod vigorously at everything he says; at both his solidly grounded science and at his outre, bullshit ventings about how this proves there is no God.)

There is no expectation from Catholics, at any rate, that minute examinations within neuroscience would show angels dancing on the head of a dendrite. Yet PZ, in his demented exclamation that there is no God, claims that the failure of finding the angel where we would never expect to see it anyway proves there is no God.

He then goes on in his smartass fashion to suggest that the materialistic method as espoused by scientists is doing a much better job of understanding the brain than your neighborhood minister.

No kidding? To me, this is akin to suggesting that the local cook has been doing a much better job at processing, preparing and serving food than your local scientist. I should hope so. But this means that I then denigrate the scientist for not succeeding in managing food?

Why do you keep looking in here?  Everyday, my little stat monitor keeps telling me that a handful of you poke you little noses in here everyday.

Why?

Assuming you are part of Myers’ Sycophantic Horde (MSH, pat. pend), you already have the kool-aid truth as you would have it for your libations regularly.  Near as I can tell (I’m spending less and less time there myself.  The theme never varies, it has no beat, and you cannot dance to it) neither his lessons nor his tiresome pedagogy have altered one iota.  He still has utter faith in the fact that faith serves no purpose in the pursuit of truth.

Which is highly ironic, if you can actually take a moment to consider it.

Now there are only two sorts of people who think Scripture is supposed to be The Big Book of Everything: New Atheists and Fundamentalists (who are more alike than either realizes).

(That last courtesy of Mark Shea.  I suggest you check it out.  Helps get the taste of bad Kool-Aid out of your mouth)

The above quote gives a small indication of the irony.  The Prophet Myers is loaded with faith.  And he encourages His Horde to have that same faith.

And since your local faith claims that I am an idiot, why keep looking in here?