Sven: The stuff at the end referred to the lovely individual that you all defended so vehemently here and
across the web because I was “prosecuting” him. I shall not name
him, because it’s obvious who he is and he doesn’t deserve any more publicity.
He has managed to get himself “censored” by a social networking site, but I haven’t heard any hew
and cry from this lot. He’s also decided that, regardless of reality, I’m
responsible for causing him to have a pathetic no-life. So, with all of your
blessings, he’s started stalking me. Here’s a repeat of who he is,
your true Myers disciple:
The anatomy of a skeptic:
18 year old English major.
Desperately lonely.
Starts blogging to make friends,
falls into Pharygula.
Starts attacking older, attractive
bearded men and fixates on them.
Gets parking ticket, spends
time attacking local police force. Returns to beard obsession.
Creates “newspaper,”
and delivers said paper to Quack’s neighborhood in the predawn hours. Frightens disabled retirees who think he is a
burglar.
Cackles on blog about how
clever he is. Doesn’t realize he has just become a stalker.
Receives praise and encouragement
from many other bloggers who also do not have lives.
Myers pretends he hasn’t
received any warning about his encouragement of this behavior. Denies responsibility for creating a stalker.
Ol’Greg evidently
took this one personally, which is a bit bizarre. MH is an individual but he
exemplifies many of you. The speed with which you swallowed and rebroadcast Myers’
error shows a complete lack of independent thought.
I’ve found the
term I was looking for to describe what I see here: authoritarianism. Altemeyer has written a free book describing the mob attack, the unthinking obedience, the illogical attachment
to being scientists but maintaining a dogmatic stance. To be clear, this
is a wonderful discussion of the religious right and gives a tremendous insight into the compartmentalization of fundamentalists. Altemeyer basically loves you guys, but you aren’t open minded scientific thinkers. http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/Introduction_links.pdf
“Bruce Hunsberger and I asked a sample of active American atheists the same question, only it was
along the lines, “Is there anything conceivable that could happen that would make you believe in the traditional God?”Fifty-one
percent of them said no. “Most (64%) of our active atheists also said they
would be uninfluenced by the discovery of a “Roman file on Jesus” that confirmed much of the Gospels, including
the resurrection”
“I have given several
groups of atheists the mirror-image scenario in which a teenager who had been raised as a strong and active Christian comes
to them for advice because he is now questioning things. Very few Manitoba parent atheists said they would tell this teen
that his parents were wrong, nor would they try to get him to become an atheist. Instead
they almost all said they’d tell him to continue searching and then decide for himself. A sample of active American
atheists was pushier. About two-thirds would have thumped the drum for atheism, loudly or softly, and about half said they
would want the teen to become a nonbeliever. But far, far more of the fundamentalists, we saw, would have tried to convert
an atheist’s child.”
“Bruce Hunsberger and
I found in our study of active American atheists that the few members of that sample who said they had “advertised”
their atheism through such things as bumper stickers found that it attracted a lot of parking tickets and vandalism. Some highly religious people are outraged that atheists would publicly declare their
lack of faith. Accordingly many of the people who belong to atheist associations hide their beliefs from most others, knowing
from experience it could affect their employment, membership in other clubs, and social connections.”
If you take the time to look through the book, there is a wonderful section on zealotry, which can happen
to any group of individuals.
If we look at nerd again,
we see his multiple postings do not address any of the logical arguments I have made.
He may have a degree, but his arguments do not attempt logic, only profanity.
The relative anonymity of the web allows him to express who he truly is: an authoritarian.
Myers
is uncomfortable with who he has become, a leader of a conformist movement, but he is no longer a liberal in any sense of
the word. As he has calcified in the crust of certainty, he has ceased to question
even his own snap judgments. When they are wrong, he is unable to examine the
basis of his decisions and apologize. He also maintains a fearless persona but
only attacks non-entities like myself rather than say, going after the pope. The
truth is he is terrified of actual confrontation with a larger authority figure like the pope, because somewhere inside he
realizes that that same tactics he promoted for attacking me will land him in prison if he starts on an established figurehead. I simply don’t have the resources to confront him, allowing him and you to bully
without fear of reprisal: classic mob behavior.
