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WillyWonka said:
Actually PZ lost all my respect during "gelatogate". At that time, I realized that he was mostly an extremist who was not interested in dialogue and compromise when possible. Not everyone is your enemy even if you do not always agree on everything.
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That and I thought crackergate was a bit gratuitous.
 
dasmiller said:
It was not universally viewed as acceptable within the skeptic community. The DBAD speech is widely viewed as being largely inspired by PZ (I don't know if Plait as ever acknowledged or denied this).
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Summary: PZ did not create a following of nonskeptics. His support was from skeptics, even though obviously his methods were not uniformly approved.

And this is an old debate. I'm talking about the approach in general. PZ is the subject of this thread, but the tactic has premeated skepticism for as long as I have been involved, and appears to predate it. Even on this forum today... do a search for insult phrases like "sky daddy" and see if we're toning it down.

Five years ago I would be citing Penn Gillette dismissal of religious people as mentally defective.That's pretty inflammatory and probably terrible PR. Above, I mentioned that Paul Kurtz' concerns about CFI's pro-atheism stance were "difficult to interpret" - this is because he had spent two generations taking a hardline no-middle-ground hostile approach to religion and dismissed compromisers as traitors to the cause. There remains constant criticism of NCSE for their willingness to collaborate with religious groups on church/state separation.

There is a local skeptic colleague of mine who goes by the handle "[******* skeptic]" because he believes insulting nonskeptics is an important component to skeptical outreach. Follow the link to read his manifesto.

At best, it's a matter of degree, and PZ is not the worst I've seen, and doesn't even have the biggest following.
 
just listening to pz talk about social justice and atheism live on radio wfmu. quite interesting chat.

sorry cant link
 
blutoski said:
Summary: PZ did not create a following of nonskeptics. His support was from skeptics, even though obviously his methods were not uniformly approved.

And this is an old debate. I'm talking about the approach in general. PZ is the subject of this thread, but the tactic has premeated skepticism for as long as I have been involved, and appears to predate it. Even on this forum today... do a search for insult phrases like "sky daddy" and see if we're toning it down.

Five years ago I would be citing Penn Gillette dismissal of religious people as mentally defective.That's pretty inflammatory and probably terrible PR. Above, I mentioned that Paul Kurtz' concerns about CFI's pro-atheism stance were "difficult to interpret" - this is because he had spent two generations taking a hardline no-middle-ground hostile approach to religion and dismissed compromisers as traitors to the cause. There remains constant criticism of NCSE for their willingness to collaborate with religious groups on church/state separation.

There is a local skeptic colleague of mine who goes by the handle "[******* skeptic]" because he believes insulting nonskeptics is an important component to skeptical outreach. Follow the link to read his manifesto.
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I could not begin to express just how much I don't care about your skeptic colleague, his handle or his Don Quixote like quest. I wish him the best and sincerely hope he enjoys himself even though he is seriously as absurd as any idiot skeptic/atheist/etc.. Now, he or someone else might argue that he is simply being ironic, but, and this is just my humble opinion but, BFD. Some people seriously take themselves far, far, far too seriously.

It's the human condition. In the end there is no us and them and getting that worked up over the tone deafness of humans (humans) strikes me as seriously sill (an oxymoron is called for here. Let's be honest, atheists can and do have their sacred cows and heroes. I'm all for goring each and every one of them. But at the end of the day we are all a bunch of self righteous monkeys whose skills are not worth anything if it were not for thousands of years of collective wisdom that we can exploit. We all collectively boot our brains with the eons of culture and wisdom from giants that without, would leave us all be speaking gibberish, making hand gestures (mostly with out privates) and playing with out feces.

Do your friend a favor, purchase him/her a copy of Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, take him out for a few drinks and then perhaps consider donating a few bucks and a visit to the nearest legal brothel. He sounds to be in need of some release and his tilting at windmills is just a solution in need of a problem or someone to care.

At best, it's a matter of degree, and PZ is not the worst I've seen, and doesn't even have the biggest following.
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I value the contributions of PZ Myers, Rebecca Watson, Surly Amy, Penn & Teller (I had an awful experience meeting Penn) Ellen Beth Wachs, Gretta Christina, Melody Hensley, etc., (even though I think the social justice warriors are seriously doing it wrong). Those who see the world as us vs them and are keeping score and/or trying to find the worst offenders or who are trying to ironically hold a mirror up to the rest of us seriously have inflated egos and just do not get it.

Let's criticize each other objectively and realize that we are all going to fail and lets try to take it all in stride. None of us are all that. Some of us are just more silly than the rest.
 
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squealpiggy said:
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I don't think anyone is claiming that PZ Myers is representative of left wing politics, just that he is trying to make the atheism movement an offshoot of left wing politics. Which of course it is not.
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But it's not left wing politics, it's some kind of radical feminism.
 
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PZ was quoted as saying:

“Don’t assume that because someone else did that, that it’s covered and you can give it a miss. No, we need to show numbers. So speak out wherever you see these two sides at loggerheads, and voice your affiliation, so it’s clear how many of us there are, against them. And this very much is an us vs. them situation. The compassionate vs. the vile. You can’t sit on the fence on this one. In a free society, apathy is an endorsement of villainy.”
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That is a vile false dichotomy. The "Dear Muslima" letter by Dawkins, BTW, was compassionate. Giving Muslims a pass on 40 year old men marrying 8 year old girls because they are brown people is vile and uncompassionate.

Bride Aged 8 Dies After Suffering Internal Sexual Injuries During Wedding Night With Man, 40

the country passed a law in February 2009 setting the minimum age of marriage at 17, but that it was repealed after conservative lawmakers declared it “un-Islamic”.
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SJWs live with the vile delusion that they are compassionate, e.g., their schadenfreude when white children suffer and die.
 
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squealpiggy said:
His radical feminism is a part of his version of left wing politics. He started to bore me with his left wing hardline stance before he jumped on the feminist bandwagon.
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Assumptions that 'X' is a leftist position doesn't make it a leftist position.
 
I've always wondered how they would deal with the n word, and here is the thread.

http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5322

Nonsense. Basically, hear no evil, see no evil. Because they can't criticize black people, they are left aimless. Because this is an issue wherein they can't get away with claiming there is one proper pro-oppressed group view, the they can come to no conclusion.

This is all false.

I can, as a white person, make conclusions about the reclaiming of this word along with the sexist slurs mentioned in the thread. Hell, I'll toss in the recent gay ones. It usually doesn't work (there was a good example of it working in the previous sentence). An in-crowd feels good when they do it, but it alienates the rest of the group and can be used as justification by the outsiders. I can't count how many times I've heard the complaint that "they can call each other that". Her look, lived experience a white person can bring to the table! In addition, we can hear from our allies in the group who oppose injustice and draw conclusions from there.

I can tell you that there will be minorities in every side of every issue. If as allies all we can do is shut up, social justice is an impossible dream that has no concrete meaning.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Assumptions that 'X' is a leftist position doesn't make it a leftist position.
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But radical feminism is a left wing position. Which explains why radical feminists are largely OK with abuse of women in Islam: Radical anti-racism is also the preserve of the left.

You are deliberately missing the point I was making in any case. PZ is a left winger, and it is his leftist politics that defines him more than his atheism. Which is why I stopped reading his blog. I got bored of his sophomoric take on modern politics. This was before he started on radical feminism.
 
For what it's worth, Watson's post on booth babes seems to contrast with earlier claims about what she was selling at her fan table at DragonCon.
 
qwints said:
For what it's worth, Watson's post on booth babes seems to contrast with earlier claims about what she was selling at her fan table at DragonCon.
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A stupid puerile show uses stupid puerile means to attract a stupid puerile audience?

I went to a Comic Con in Toronto last year and was looking at some of the paid stalls. One of them had used DVDs. I was flicking through some low quality and slightly overpriced discs when a fairly attractive woman barely dressed in a vaguely generic superhero outfit accosted me.

"If you buy three you can get your picture with me" she purred.

"I don't want my picture taken with you" I replied and walked away as she shook her head at some skeezy dude behind the counter.

I don't know how much business these booth babe types do. I mean it's fairly transparent and cheap isn't it? I'm much more likely to be drawn to someone, male or female, in a well done and imaginative costume than buy, watch or subscribe to something because there are boobs in front of it.
 
RandFan said:
I could not begin to express just how much I don't care about your skeptic colleague, his handle or his Don Quixote like quest. I wish him the best and sincerely hope he enjoys himself even though he is seriously as absurd as any idiot skeptic/atheist/etc.. Now, he or someone else might argue that he is simply being ironic, but, and this is just my humble opinion but, BFD. Some people seriously take themselves far, far, far too seriously.

It's the human condition. In the end there is no us and them and getting that worked up over the tone deafness of humans (humans) strikes me as seriously sill (an oxymoron is called for here. Let's be honest, atheists can and do have their sacred cows and heroes. I'm all for goring each and every one of them. But at the end of the day we are all a bunch of self righteous monkeys whose skills are not worth anything if it were not for thousands of years of collective wisdom that we can exploit. We all collectively boot our brains with the eons of culture and wisdom from giants that without, would leave us all be speaking gibberish, making hand gestures (mostly with out privates) and playing with out feces.

Do your friend a favor, purchase him/her a copy of Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, take him out for a few drinks and then perhaps consider donating a few bucks and a visit to the nearest legal brothel. He sounds to be in need of some release and his tilting at windmills is just a solution in need of a problem or someone to care.

I value the contributions of PZ Myers, Rebecca Watson, Surly Amy, Penn & Teller (I had an awful experience meeting Penn) Ellen Beth Wachs, Gretta Christina, Melody Hensley, etc., (even though I think the social justice warriors are seriously doing it wrong). Those who see the world as us vs them and are keeping score and/or trying to find the worst offenders or who are trying to ironically hold a mirror up to the rest of us seriously have inflated egos and just do not get it.

Let's criticize each other objectively and realize that we are all going to fail and lets try to take it all in stride. None of us are all that. Some of us are just more silly than the rest.
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For sure, and sorry if it sounded like I was trying to promote his blog. I only intended to provide an example to demonstrate that PZ's 'style' or 'tactics' or 'approach' is very much at home within skepticism, rather than a marginal fringe philosophy. It's a frequent topic on this forum, and certainly has plenty of defenders in the greater skeptosphere.

Having said that, I am mindful that my local skeptical community may not be representative, and my perspective could be skewed toward perceiving PZ as more popular than he actually is. They certainly consider social activism to be a core skeptical undertaking, and PZ was a guest speaker last year, taken out to dinner and pub on their tab. I didn't go, but that's because I don't really attend skeptical get-togethers these days.

And I also didn't intend to say that just because his approach is popular within skepticism that it must therefore be 'OK' - tactical questions about public stances on which issue, and what tone to use have never been resolved, and as far as I can tell, this is because participants have divergent and sometimes even conflicting goals.
 
blutoski said:
For sure, and sorry if it sounded like I was trying to promote his blog. I only intended to provide an example to demonstrate that PZ's 'style' or 'tactics' or 'approach' is very much at home within skepticism, rather than a marginal fringe philosophy. It's a frequent topic on this forum, and certainly has plenty of defenders in the greater skeptosphere.

Having said that, I am mindful that my local skeptical community may not be representative, and my perspective could be skewed toward perceiving PZ as more popular than he actually is. They certainly consider social activism to be a core skeptical undertaking, and PZ was a guest speaker last year, taken out to dinner and pub on their tab. I didn't go, but that's because I don't really attend skeptical get-togethers these days.

And I also didn't intend to say that just because his approach is popular within skepticism that it must therefore be 'OK' - tactical questions about public stances on which issue, and what tone to use have never been resolved, and as far as I can tell, this is because participants have divergent and sometimes even conflicting goals.
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Fair enough. Thank you for the response.
 
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