CORRECTION: New evidence suggests that the screenshot discussed in this post and elsewhere was not a forgery but the result of a glitch. I offer a correction, and an apology, and a discussion of the implications, here.
So the mighty Paul Elam has acknowledged — in the comments section of Girl Writes What’s blog, at least –that there might just be some sort of problem going on with regard to, you know, that whole fake screenshot thing. You know, the blatant fraud that A Voice for Men mangling — sorry, managing — editor Dean Esmay seems to have engaged in to cover up a mistake.
But, Paul being Paul, he somehow manages to turn his sort-of acknowledgement of the problem into an attack on me, bizarrely blaming me (the person who actually pointed out this fraud) for him not knowing about it before today:
As much as I hate to say it, Futrelle does have a valid point. I am looking in to it today, and unlike Futrelle, I will address the results of my inquiry in public no matter where they end up.
I don’t mind looking into problems, even when they are pointed out by such a bald faced liar. I would have actually been aware of this sooner if his blog were worth reading. I had to become aware of it in your comments to even know there was a problem.
Well, Paul, I would have happily brought my findings to the comments section of A Voice for Men, rather than the comments section of Girl Writes What’s blog, but you may recall I am banned there. And I wonder if anyone there would have had the courage to stand up and say that, gosh, this Futrelle guy has a point, given how quickly people are censored there for deviating from your site’s perverse “conventional wisdom.”
And gosh, Paul, how unfair it is to expect the publisher of a site to be aware of what’s, you know, published on it. Concerns about the story were brought up by your own commenters shortly after it first ran. Esmay referred in an article and an editorial note to my alleged “lies” about the story; it didn’t occur to you to even go look at what I had said? And even aside from the phony screenshot, or anything I’ve written, did you really think that Esmay’s bizarre explanations for the original mistake made any kind of sense?
In other words, are you incompetent, or are you lying about being unaware of the problem until now?
In any case, I await the results of your “investigation.” I am especially eager to see how you will manage to spin things so it becomes someone else’s fault. Will it be some evil conspiracy that “set you up?”
And when exactly have I lied, Paul? Could you offer a citation? When I point out the lies on your site, I fucking back up each claim.
[EDIT: Added some stuff in the “gosh, Paul” paragraph and made a few other changes.]
@inurashii: I can tell by how you always lose the argument, right?
@Freemage:
Looks like that to an outsider too. As a theist, I’m also VERY much in favour of a secular state. Just like atheists don’t want to be told to believe, I don’t want to be told WHAT and HOW to believe.
Damn straight. One of the most chilling moments of my fundamentalist life was when somebody asked the preacher about ‘freedom of religion’ and how that would be applied to Muslims.
“You aren’t serioulsy going ot argue that the founding fathers had muslims in mind, are you?”
Bam. Freedom of religion, as long as it’s an approved religion.
Scary stuff. We need a heck of a lot less of that.
On the subject of freedom of religion, lots of asshole atheists here in Sweden keep on purposely (I have to believe it’s on purpose; nobody can be that stupid for real) misunderstanding what that means. They say “To me, freedom of religion also means freedom from religion” and everyone’s like yeah, that’s right, you don’t have to be religious if you don’t want to, but they then elaborate what they mean and say that church bells, prayer calls from mosques and in general anything that sounds or looks religious must be banned from public space, because otherwise their sensitive atheist minds might be hurt by hearing or seeing something religious.
Uh, no. THAT’S not what “freedom of religion” means.
Dvärghundspossen: I was a self-described ‘political atheist’ long before I became a philosophical one. I definitely realize the value of individuals such as yourself, and thank you for the support for the real cause.
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Evo-psych is actually a lot like the “men’s movement”. In both cases, the concept, using the words without any connotation, is sound: “Men have unique issues under the current societal system; we should address those problems”; “Evolution would have a dramatic impact on the heuristics we use to live our lives; studying how those evolutionary responses–which would have developed far more slowly than our societies have–is a good way to gain insight into some of our behavior.” But both are just so much flotsam, because they refuse to actually do the work. Instead, they sit back and pronounce a bunch of half-baked ‘theories’ and call it a day.
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Howard: Especially since, y’know, there’s actual quotes about Muslims being included in the First Amendment rubric. I mean, seriously–it’s not hard to find. It’s actually harder to find a reference to non-believers than to Islam.
That’s not a Fox News approved talking point, so I think we can safely say let’s not let the facts get in the way of our talking points.
Is Woman’s Hour really an example of extreme feminism?
Good question @_@
Yes, and when IS white history month???
These fucking guys.
@Freemage; Actually, I’m somewhat involved with the Swedish atheist movement right now. I was first contacted by the head of their organization to be a participant in a TV show he was hosting. Like a talk show handling various philosophical subjects. That same guy later on mailed me asking me to write an article for a magazine he’s editing, and another guy in their lead asked me to hold a lecture on free will for their atheist study circle. At that point I felt like I had to ask “Sure, I can do that too, as long as you don’t mind a religious person lecturing you”, but he was cool with that.
Funny how things turn out. Like, one month you’re helping out a PhD student in theology (on his dissertation on free will and hell), next month you’re on a talk show with head of the atheists…
Haha, I realize that came off as “look at me! I’ve been on TV!” or something. What I wanted to say was just that it’s cool when theists and atheists don’t treat each other as automatic enemies just because we believe differently.
I was chatting with some people recently and we were actually getting along. They had no agenda or insane grievances to project. It was so refreshing.
@ mr Bannister
But what about the poor poor overlooked menzzzzzzz?? Men get LITERALLY no air time. At all. Ever. Fact. ESPECIALLY white men.
Here’s an example of some of the issues concerning evo-psych. Granted, this is a popular media article that was written to purposely titillate the audience, but I think it illustrates some of the problems with EP. I’m no good at hyperlinking so I’ll apologize in advance.
New Theory on Why Men Love Breasts
http://www.livescience.com/23500-why-men-love-breasts.html
One of them is the problem of teasing out modern cultural influences from human evolution. In this case, the researcher proposes that the oxytocin produced during breastfeeding that helps mother and child bond, also works when her male partner stimulates her breasts, so the bond between partners is also strengthened. Ergo, men have evolved to love female breasts.
Okay, several problems with this. First, not all cultures in human history have fetishized female breasts. Many cultures view breasts as utilitarian and not erotic. While it may be true that manual stimulation of the breasts produces oxytocin, to say that men “evolved” to love breasts because of this is quite a leap. However what you can do is look at various human cultures and compare them. If all human cultures in the past as well as modern ones fetishized female breasts, then yeah, the researcher may have a sound hypothesis. But we know that isn’t the case.
Second, the falsification problem. The researcher would, for instance, have to find this effect in a statistically significant amount of human cultures, both past and present. How could this be done reliably and validly?
Third, not all women can breastfeed successfully and not all women enjoy having their breasts stimulated. So what happens in those cases where the woman doesn’t receive the effect of oxytocin? Does the researcher mean to imply that she will be unable to bond with her child or her partner?
Anyway, those are just a few of the problems with this particular research, at least according to the article’s reporting of it. A lot of evo-psych research is like this (shaky falsification, post-hoc analysis, etc.) and that’s why I sniff at it (at this point in time).
There are probably others here than can do a better job of explaining this than I have though.
Man , David is such a liar with his easily verifiable facts and “evidence”. God, every single blog on Manboobz is such conjecture -Tom Martin didn’t REALLY call 97% of all women sluts, he called them whores God get your facts straight you mangina female apologist
@Falconer
Yeah I’m aware of PZ Myers – he’s an islamophobe who writes a dumb blog I hate… Really, just because the man doesn’t hate women doesn’t mean he can’t be boorish or obnoxious. He isn’t a particularly transgressive figure within the atheist movement, he still goes on about how anyone who believes in god is stupid and “irrational” and anyone who doesn’t is a beacon of “reason” , and will defend his more disgusting comrades to the death (racists like Sam Harris and Pat Condell) Seriously, if you think that any real problem in society could be fixed if everyone became an atheist I’m not going to take you seriously. I think I care less about creationist nonsense getting taught in schools and more about the fact that the schoolkids, regardless, are going to live in a society which is capitalism on steroids! Movement atheism seems to be really myopic considering all the actual problems in society, I really can’t imagine any of these UnHoly Warriors going on about anything that actually matters. I may be sixteen, but it all just seems so… /childish/.
Also I’m a ‘his’ not a ‘hir’, and quite comfortable with that!
@Dvärghundspossen
Silly question: are you with the LO? I think you said you were Swedish and I hear a lot of swedes are in that union. (something like eighty percent union density in the whole country, wow!) I also greatly admire syndicalism and am wondering how you and other swedes perceive the SAC. Are they cool or just silly?
There is power in a union!
Morning listening on radio 4. AND FEMINAZI’S TRY TO CLAIM WE’RE NOT LIVING IN A MATRIARCHY?????? WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!111!!
Today: Morning news and current affairs with Justin Webb and John Humphrys, including George Osborne on tax
The life scientific: Jim Al-Khalili and David Spiegelhalter discuss risk
One to one: Owen Bennett-Jones talks to Mick Flynn
Book of the week: Read by Kenneth Cranham
Womans hour: Beatrice Mtetwa, human rights’ lawyer working in Zimbabwe. With Jenni Murray.
Dangerous visions: Jane Rogers dramatises her award winning novel.
Shared planet: Monty Don explores a puzzling dilemma
Tales from the stave: Acclaimed baritone Roderick Williams joins Frances Fyfield to study the manuscripts of George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad
Point proven.
I never feel particularly comfortable around “movement” atheists. I’m sure some of them are wonderful, but so many (see: pretty much all of the ones I’ve encountered) completely lack the ability to distinguish between “theistic religion” and “privileged theistic religion”. I’m a pagan polytheist. Christians don’t treat me any better than they treat atheists (and it’s a real treat being called ableist slurs by BOTH Christians and atheists!).
I thought it was very likely that you were, but maybe you were one of today’s 10,000.
Also, it’s not just PZ Myers, it’s Ed Brayton and Jen McCreight and AronRa and Greta Christina and lots more besides.
So objective, there. Saying that Islam is problematic does not an Islamophobe make. Do you have a cite for the Islamophobia claim?
Did I claim he couldn’t be boorish or obnoxious? You were claiming everyone in movement atheism was an asshole rich white boy, here’s a whole bunch of Atheism+ folks who aren’t all whitecishet.
Given that the Slymepitters hate his guts, and that he’s been a staunch advocate for Rebecca Watson since Elevatorgate first happened, I’d say he’s plenty transgressive within the atheist movement.
He doesn’t have any patience for people who argue that science should make room for God Did It. He doesn’t think that one’s religious practices should make an iota of difference, he wants to stop the US from soaking in Christianity.
Got a cite for defending “his more disgusting comrades to the death”? From what I’ve seen, he’s plenty capable of calling out people being assholes in atheism. He’s all over the Women in Skepticism 2 debacle.
Got a cite for PZ thinking that everyone becoming atheists would fix the “real problems?”
Newsflash: People can care about multiple issues at a time. Capitalism On Steroids! is an issue that many people can get behind, regardless of their religious convictions, but god forbid atheists talk about maybe not teaching woo in schools.
Yep, bridling our children’s ability to ask questions, making non-Christians feel unwelcome in our society, schools, businesses, and the military, blatantly disregarding the Constitution … not one of those is a “real problem.”
If only they’d asked you first, huh?
That’s fine, thanks for letting me know your preferred pronoun.
@Falconer: I’ve sometimes been somewhat critical of the way PZ approaches Islam.
I think Anthony K (Brownian) (nope, it was Ing) had an excellent breakdown of why it was problematic…. I was thinking a few years, but it looks like a year back, in comments. Here.
Which is notable; PZ got pushback from his commentariet, and as near as I can tell, has been doing better about it since then.
Sorry, that doesn’t lend itself to a black and white ‘PZ is good or bad, answer now’ discussion, but that’s life for you.
At this point, it’s apparent that J is, w/re: to PZ, a lying douchebag. This bit alone–“anyone who doesn’t is a beacon of “reason””–is so far removed from the reality of PZ’s writing that it’s either a willful and deliberate lie, or the product of someone who has never more than once skimmed the blog looking for gripe-points.
I can get not being a fan of the man–he IS one of the more abrasive and aggressive anti-theists out there, and some folks just don’t like that mode of communication. But the notion that he immediately grants a pass to all and any atheists is inane and fabricated.
Sid: That’s a fair cop. My wife’s a pagan, as well, and I certainly wouldn’t hit her with ableist slurs, so I see no reason to deploy them against other pagans, either.
OTOH, there is a lot of anti-science woo that gets foisted upon the public by self-described pagans, New Agers and so forth. There’s also institutional prejudice that occurs on the ground. Don’t forget the Dianic pagans who refuse to allow transwomen into their groups, on the grounds that they aren’t ‘true women’.
I am so offended that someone thought I might not be cis! Also, I’m 16, hear my words of wisdom.
This would certainly be the American understanding also, but there are legitimate alternate approaches to the relationship between church and state. For instance, I know that in France, there’s a general belief that religious expression doesn’t belong in the public sphere, less to protect delicate atheist ears than because they have a history of religious wars and don’t want that to happen again.
Yeah, citing Sam Harris when PZ got into a fued with him? Because Sam Harris said he was in favor of racial profiling?
It’s, um, telling.
Citing Sam Harris as an example of somebody PZ doesn’t criticize.
I really dislike showy religiosity (partly because it contradicts what most religions actually say about how one should show their devotion), but I’m not sure why church bells/the call to prayer/other stuff that basically happens in the background and doesn’t involve actively attempting to prosthelytize is a problem. Some people may find those sounds annoying, but constant Christmas music in stores from November 1st to Xmas Day can get annoying too and most people wouldn’t suggest banning that.
DAMMIT THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT LEGISLATIVE BATTLE OF OUR TIME–NO MORE JINGLE BELLS!!!
In all seriousness, though, we have existing rules about when other people’s noises/shows of devotion become an intrusion into our lives. The idea of banning other people’s shows of devition does get really…. intrusive.