Hammill the prodigal
Hammill, as I said in a comment earlier this morning, is Walter Smith, known as Wally, a graduate student in biology at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
He said last summer that he would never do it again. He’s been doing it again.
He’s been sowing little seeds of hostility and paranoia and mistrust. He’s been ever so gently tarnishing the reputations of gnu atheists. Again.
For instance on this post, which of course drew him like a fly to honey, because it was both scornful and inaccurate about me. His kind of thing! (I don’t know why he hates me so particularly, given that I’m hardly the only vocal atheist out there, but he does.) He saw an opening for some poison, and he was ready. He was worried about the way new atheists talk.
Just look at the words used to describe Josh here or others from several blogs over the past week: blatantly misrepresented, intellectually lazy, deceptive, dishonest, untrustworthy, deliberate distortion. They all sound like something from a political attack ad in late October, not salvos in a mutual debate or discussion. I don’t want to read too much into intentions or motives, but I don’t personally see them as an attempt to invite mutual debate. I see them as an attempt to quash dissenting opinion through character attacks without giving the heart of the debate a chance to find the table – a marginalization or distraction strategy, if you will. That’s certainly politics, although I would argue it’s far from the good kind.
And four more paragraphs of the same kind of thing – the very best most refined kind of concern trolling. Now read it again with the YNH blog firmly in mind – the lies, the accusations of lying, the obscenity, the sexism, the multiple socks all confirming the lies – that’s our refined concern troll.
Then another solemn refined comment in the same vein. Then warm agreement from one of the people he deceived. Then me asking a different anonymous commenter, TB, if it was the same TB aka Tim Broderick who called me a liar repeatedly at the Intersection. Then another concerned, conscientious, hand-wringing, highly respectable intervention by Wally the confessed serial liar.
For the sake of argument, consider for a moment that TB is who you say he is and what you say happened is an accurate representation of what did happen. Beyond the obvious ethical considerations of providing the real name of another poster who has not personally divulged their identity on a site, how is a past argument relevant to the current discussion? Shouldn’t an argument be judged on its merits and not on one’s perception of the character of the person making it? Unless there are clear logical flaws in what TB has been saying here, I fail to see how pointing out a past dispute serves anything beyond an attempt to undermine one’s character, which is the point I was making several posts above. I hesitate to use this word due to the small firestorm it’s caused in this post, but dropping a pseudonymous commenter’s real name along with what appears to be an entirely unrelated, negative character reference seems an undeniably political move. (If there is a connection between the past and present somewhere that I’m missing (and I may be) that makes all of this more relevant, feel free to correct me.)
Feast on the rich, multiple, layered ironies of that comment.
Has anyone linked to Wally’s poetry yet?
Lays on the religious metaphor a little think, there, dontcha think?
I guess everybody’s still at the other party.
D’oh. “Thick.”
Something has happened to the link at onearth.org it does not open and when you search for author Wally Smith there are no articles listed. Is there an archived version somewhere that could be linked to?
Thank you.
No the party’s here now.
beccaf22, this one, and his profile there, still works for me: http://www.onearth.org:8887/node/1090?comments=all
Becaf22: http://www.onearth.org:8887/author/whsmith
Sorry Aratina Cage beat me too it. I guess I should have refreshed.
As Mark Jones noted on the previous thread, here‘s the YNH we know and love:
#4
This one, now with four excellent comments, is still working
http://www.onearth.org:8887/node/1090
Oh dear. He really does deserve all he gets.
Hey, look, there’s a dentist in Tuscaloosa named Walter H. Smith, too. Presumably not the same guy.
Meaningless but amusing.
The Moral Of The Story that I hope sticks with people is something like this: we dug into claims of atheist incivility, and what we found was Walter Smith.
Does that sound about right? These claims are more false, irrelevant, and even manufactured, than is commonly realized and this is a rather extreme version of a larger phenomenon. Again, I don’t know a ton about the TJ/Hammill stuff, so correct me if there are crucial facts I’m leaving out, or a better moral to take away from it.
This YNH stuff really needs pushback, because it really makes no sense. I have no doubt that science literacy can be improved by people who stress the compatibility of science and religion. Religious people. I like what BioLogos does. “Hey, we’re evangelical Christians just like you and, we’ve got to tell you, you cannot pretend that the science is wrong about biological evolution.” Love it. So glad they’re out there doing that job. Religious people will listen to religious scientists. I get it.
What I don’t get is why it should make any difference what atheists think. Is there some Baptist minister out there who’s going to reject the Clergy Letter Project to spite Jerry Coyne? I’m afraid it’s all about people who have compromised their intellectual standards in what they think is a good cause, upset that others have declined to do the same.
josef, yes, that does sound about right. There is a consensus that newatheistsarenasty. Some of that consensus has been created by Wally. There is no equivalent gnu atheist version. That’s worth noticing.
And from now on we get to call gnu-hating “doing a Wally.”
Have there been any responses from Wally’s buddies, Chris Colgate Mooney or Josh R?
Do we call all the gnu-haters Walleys now?
Yes. Yes, indeed. The more I read his oeuvre, under ALL his adorable pen names, the more I think this should be publicized as much as possible.
@16 I’m also interested in what the accommobots have to say. I suppose they think it’s terribly unjust that we know the little fraud’s real name. His outing only proves how mean gnus are, I suppose they’ll say.
All right, now, there will be no shouting forced laughter here.
I have never been convinced of this. It seems to me that people who can be convinced of the compatibility of science and religion are religious people who are already reasonable. It’s pushing on doors that are already open.
I also see a danger, to be honest, of stressing the compatibility of religion and science because there would be curiosity from believers about why the compatibility needs to be stressed.
Have there been any surveys to indicate that minds have actually been changed about science by the accommodationist approach?
Oh I see P.Z.’s posted on it. That’ll get it even more eyeballs. Good.
How much do you want to bet that Wallies the internet over will completely ignore this revelation as “trivial” until the articles and responses are in the backs of peoples minds? And then and only then bring it up as an example of “Gnus resorting to dishonest tactics because they can’t rationally deal with dissent!”?
I put up ten dollars.
This is what I meant. And, actually, the effort has much to do with trying to keep their religion relevant to their scientifically literate children. In that respect, although scientific atheists are the enemy, they are also the motivator. You’re helping.
Oh why, oh why can we not comment on http://www.jeremystangroom.com/ ? :)
Steve: I guess there must be x number of religious science teachers, so taking the US stats, I don’t see the evidence for Walley’s assertion.
[…] Benson has published the real name and academic affiliation of a most nefarious serial sock puppet, formerly known as “Thomas […]
Hmm…what happened to Josh Rosenau? He was soooo talkative up until now. I suppose he must be carefully penning a profuse apology…
Steve Zara asked:
The single piece of research that I have heard Mooney touting has been the study by Brendan Nyman and Jason Reifler who looked at how peoples prejudices can be confirmed by stories about the subject of the prejudices – even if the story directly contradicts the prejudice. In other words the subjects only remember and reinforce their prejudice and not the detail of the story.
The study was not about accomodationism and gnu atheism, it was about political questions – the conservative, liberal divide, but Mooney uses it to hypothesize that gnu atheism may reinforce prejudices against atheism and science in the minds of religious people. This is the basis of his idea that gnu atheists should not be spokespeople on scientific topics but should let religious scientists front the subject in front of the camera. Of course Mooney is completely oblivious to the irony that his attacks on gnu atheists in the media highlight atheist scientists more than ever. According to his own theory this should be exactly the wrong thing to do. It will reinforce the public prejudice and thus completely counteract his stated goals!
You know, the funny thing about this to me, is that accomodationists qua accomodationists, the people who are actually engaged in talking to religious people, don’t actually get that much criticism from us. We do talk about problems that can arise when the NCSE gets in bed with Christian organizations and that sort of thing, but it’s not that much.
Oh sure, we don’t have many kind things to say about religion (because, honestly, there aren’t that many), but I’ve seen no sign that it’s anathema to anyone to see other people trying to negotiate with the religious without trying to talk them out of it. Our problem is with religion and its excesses, not so much with people who are fighting them in the “wrong” way.
The main instigators of this stuff seem to be accomodationists going after us for being too uncivil. I don’t entirely get it. Because atheism is too scary? Because we haven’t forever resigned ourselves to our social position, feigning respect for beliefs we find absurd or even abhorrent? Or do they do it just to win points by placing themselves in the position of the “moderate”, the “good evolutionist” or the “good atheist” (as opposed to all those uppity ones stirring up trouble and getting all “in your face” about it)?
I’m inclined to think that it’s almost due to a sort of despair in the face of religion’s power. If you are sure that a revolution will be squashed, you might as well take a stand against it, talk people out of it, discredit the leaders, rat ’em out and butter up to the current regime. Perhaps even rationalize to yourself that the status quo is just fine, treating as sour grapes the alternative you don’t think is possible. After all, change and conflict are scary, and the revolution would probably be even worse than the regime. And religion can’t be too bad; it still allows babies and puppies (except in some forms of Islam).
If that is mentality of some accomodationists, I sort of pity them, really.
Regardless, this sort of behavior (running from condescending and concern trolling to outright incivility) definitely does annoy gnus, and the push-back from that is then used as evidence that gnus are just totally mean and nasty. Never mind the context, which is an overwhelming atmosphere of religious privilege, followed by being thrown under the bus by accomodationists trying to win points. (with… someone. Progressive believers? Postmodernists? Each other?)
In this climate, I guess some people find it useful to have propagandists like Wally Smith around. You need examples of confrontational incivility being dredged up, and people seeming so thoughtful and rational about opposing any hint that people should maybe stop believing things that make no sense. It’s the ultra-specialized fantasy fetish porn of political maneuvering. It’s the Fox News niche; you don’t need facts, you need stories and memes to beat your opponents over the head with. Of course, the tone is very different, even eloquent and prim. Still, it’s a marker of being on a side. Not those course gnus with their profane language, but elaborate (if extremely superficial and inconsistent) tact.
None of this is remotely necessary. Just last week I spoke with an anthropologist who said that we should put less energy into arguing back towards the religious, a position that I quite disagree with. It went very well, because he wasn’t just throwing around crap about the arguments doing nothing but driving the religious away, or about how atheists are just like fundamentalists (a meme that makes me want to tear my hair out in frustration if I hear it even one more time). He was actually putting forward positive suggestions about community building, acknowledging that helping people out of religion is a positive thing, talking about what he thought were the specific problems with debates we hold with the religious (stuff like over-emphasizing just how important we think the God concept is, or how standard debate format encourages confirmation bias).
It was good because he didn’t take a parental role, didn’t play into the stereotypes forced upon us by the religious, didn’t make unsupportable assumptions about people’s motives or values, and didn’t collapse the atheist community into a 1-D spectrum of “civility”.
Can we just have that level of conversation?
And can we not play into this bizarre notion that, every time you say something bad about religion, you have to “balance” it with a good opinion of religion, or with a criticism of atheism? It’s a silly practice; in popular media the scales are already tipped strongly against us, while epistemically the scales have essentially nothing set against us. It’s not incumbent upon us to preserve a balance that’s not there to start with, neither in philosophy nor in publicity.
Finally! Someone with worse poetry than a Vogon.
*course gnus => coarse gnus
This is really weird. Why would anyone go to such lengths to troll and sockpuppet just to scold some internet atheists for being mean?
Hammill Says: at NonProphetStatusJanuary 18th, 2011 at 9:33 am
However he slips up here, as between Jan 3d and Jan 27th 2011 Hammill said this at Unquiet scientist
I would say “unbelievable” but at this point I’ll believe anything. See all Hammills comments above. All true.
I’v never felt the swoosh of xylem on tent-roof nylon. I come from a depraved background tho.
Erm. Doesn’t that study therefore suggest overt accommodationism is a big mistake, and the best approach is not to mention the issue of compatibility at all?
What a very strange suggestion. How are people supposed to know that the speakers are religious scientists? Do they wear T-shirts saying “Yes, I do have an invisible friend”? What signal is it supposed to send – that gnu atheists often have laryngitis?
I have to confess to enjoying seeing people tie themselves in knots like this, when it’s all really very simple if you a Gnice Gnu.
I saw a tent with a phloem bucket in it once tho.
Not exactly. Most religious people, with the exception of young earth creationists, think that THEIR religion is compatible with science. It should not be a problem, in that case, to talk about compatibility as much as you want since they believe that anyway.
The problem with Mooneys thesis is the public criticism of gnu atheism – THAT should be counterproductive according to Mooneys model since it draws attention to atheist scientists.
Is it worth paying the accommodationists any mind at all? Aren’t they better just totally ignored and we get on with what we do? I find them all to be a waste of time and a distraction.
HAhahahaha.
I went over to The Intersection to see if Mooney had any comment on the matter. He didn’t (at least not yet), and I also noticed his Sitemeter icon has been removed. He must be getting some seriously reduced traffic if he now feels the need to hide the always-before-available traffic stats.
I agree. I’m just curious about their thought processes. They seem to me to be even more compartmentalised than the believers they target.
Incidentally, I would be really fascinated to see if there have been any studies to see if any Gnu atheist has had their mind changed by an accommodationist argument. Has PZ ever faltered? Has Ophelia ever wanted to turn away from presenting the truth because of the delicate sensibilities of the faithful?
I think I know what the answer is. So, I’m wondering what they think the point is of their wingeing.
I doubt that he will. It will just remind people of his own ineptitude in allowing the sock-puppetry to continue on The Intersection for so long and for failing to check his sources for the Exhibit A story.
#40, 42
Well, he’s definitely aware of it. At least one person (me) has emailed him Wally’s story…
Steve Zara said:
The closest to this has probably been Massimo Pigliucci, who doesnt quite go along with the accomodationists but seems to now support some of their arguments against the gnu atheist position – or more accurately he argues on the same side as some accomodationists albeit with a slightly different reasoning. For instance he seems to agree with the NCSE on the compatibility of science and religion but more from the point of view that both ‘science’ and ‘religion’ are unclear terms and it is difficult to say such unclear definitions are incompatible (I’ve previously termed it the argument from pedantry).
On a different note, I’d like to point out that, despite confirmation bias, people do change their minds from time to time. So key research would seem to be not only that which demonstrates that confirmation bias occurs, but research into what factors alleviate it.
For example, it seems that affirming people’s personal identities attenuates confirmation bias effects with regards to political issues. This appears to reflect an actual increase in objectivity, as opposed to (or more likely in addition to) simply being an agreeable response to flattery.
So in certain arenas, it may be useful to open a statement with an appeal to shared values that you explicitly expect the listener/reader to share (tolerance, fairness, compassion, an earnest search for truth), just to lower defenses that have been put up out of sheer prejudice against an opposing view. This is actually potentially useful (and in any case unlikely to hurt), as opposed to simply giving up on changing people’s minds.
Just in case anyone might still be harboring any remnant feelings of squickiness about outing this psychonaut, you can rest a little easier knowing that “Tom Johnson” had this to say when asked to consider the possible consequences of his assholery:
209. Tom Johnson Says:
October 27th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Bruce:
There were “celebrity figures” at these events? Where did you get that idea?
And I would ‘lose my job’? Of course not! It might make work a living nightmare for me, but I wouldn’t lose my job.
For instance he seems to agree with the NCSE on the compatibility of science and religion but more from the point of view that both ‘science’ and ‘religion’ are unclear terms and it is difficult to say such unclear definitions are incompatible (I’ve previously termed it the argument from pedantry).
Oh dear. That really is a bit of a pain. I would have thought it would be clear to everyone by now that science is what you do while wearing lab coats and religion requires gowns and robes. To distinguish the two is easy… just count buttons. Also, you generally don’t need safety classes while performing religion (except for during a really big sacrifice). Other that that, I can see similarities. Both are mostly boring and often mean you have to get up early to do things you would rather not at weekends.
Sean: Are you thinking of some of Scott Attran’s work looking at negotiating intractable conflicts at the level of ‘sacred’ values? Not sacred in the religious sense – more finding the values that are common to (most) humans and working your way from there. Stumbling block is we will not cede authority to the religious as they would have us do. It is most uncivil of us.
This is the study Mooney cites: http://www.springerlink.com/content/064786861r21m257/fulltext.html
The abstract says:
As I understand him, Mooney argues that merely telling people they are wrong does little to change their minds. He cites the above paper as evidence for that assertion. See, you can’t just do what the gnus do, he insinuates, and scold people about how wrong they are. He has suggested that gnus might be creating the “backfire effect.” It would take too much space for us to list all the things that are wrong with that analysis. But I think that’s his basic “point” in citing the paper.
Not bad, but surely the real money quote comes at the end of his original comment about the conservation event:
Maybe his downfall was that he really came to believe that.
I’m sure we shall hear from others who know/knew him before long. I await enlightenment.
@clod,
I suppose I was leaning in that direction, although I agree that there is a problem in that religions tend to appeal to supposedly universal authoritarian values that are not, actually, universal. (We always focus on faith, but seeing humility as being equivalent to obedience to a higher power is a real stumbling block.)
But self-affirmation is more about “virtues” and social roles than values, actually, so I may have put it poorly. I mean more like “I am a reasonable person, so I will see the strengths as well as weaknesses in this argument.” Or “I respect American values such as freedom of speech and religion.”
These are not always 100% rational, but people rarely are (and confirmation bias never is). Invoking memes like these may combat the intrinsic tendency of many believers to see skeptics as entirely members of a hostile out-group.
I won’t try to defend Wally except in one regard: that poetry is not very good — it’s precious, sententious, imprecise, and ill-considered — but I have seen much, much worse. I’ve seen enough undergraduate poetry that my awfulometer has been recalibrated. I’ve even seen poems that are improved by being run through the DadaDodo generator. Nah, this stuff doesn’t come close to being really terrible, though “baited breath” does make me snicker a bit.
I actually think Wally could be a half-decent poet in twenty or thirty years if he somehow changes course and manages to get his head on straight, and that’s not as backhanded a compliment as one might think. It’s unfortunate that his personal issues show up so strongly in his writing here, and I’m not strictly talking about the bee in his bonnet about a few openly atheist bloggers. He’s been self-indulgent and unconcerned with telling the truth as he knows it; I believe I can see some of that in those poems. And there’s an odd aftertaste to them as well — I sense an awkward desperation for contentment.
@sean
Yeah, there’s that tendency alright. To some, atheists are barely human & teh intertoobs don’t help in that regard. Communications at the levels required to effect change at the personal level seem to happen best face to face – and then rarely. Otherwise we are left with challenging shit or throwing stuff out there and hoping some sinks in. N’owt wrong wi that tho, and it’s working…I think?
An awkward desperation for contentment – that could be a title for something itself.
Hey Cam I’ve thought of a name for the cat – Hi or Haimo, for High Maintenance. Good eh?
Not bad! Though he’s beginning to chill out, thank goodness. He’s even getting used to my playing the banjo.
ObWally: “December Ecology” — the basic conceit is okay, and I like many of the poem’s flashes of specificity, but “fingering”, Wally? Really? And what’s with the “only”?
Definitely better, although losing it’s way a bit towards the end.
From the beginning I thought this whole notion of a self-imposed exile was a bit silly and unrealistic. I couldn’t imagine that he was really going to refrain from commenting forever. That’s just not how humans behave.
But when he did come back, I can’t see why he didn’t just say: Look here, people, my name is Tom Johnson. I’m back from my 40 years of wandering in the desert and I have something more to say. I’m still going to use a pseudonym, but I’m going to stick to the one identity and I’m not going to pull any more tricks. What you see is what you get.
I would have had no problem at all with that, and I doubt if anyone else on the gnu side would either. We could take him at face value and argue with him or ignore him, as we chose, without any subterfuges. But I can’t see how Wally thought that yet another fake identity — being Tom Johnson while pretending to be someone else — was the best way to get back in the game.
Oh but it’s entirely obvious why he wanted a new fake identity. Tom Johnson was thoroughly tainted. He was disgraced. He was exposed as a guy who used fake commenters to call an uppity woman a useless putrid twat. That puts him in a certain category, and our Wally wanted to be in a better category.
He wanted, in fact, to come across as superior to the gnus. More erudite, calmer, more reasonable, better at listening, more moderate, more adult – he was probably enjoying the performance aspect.
It’s funny, in a way – the vulgarian of YNH morphed into the elder statesman who pontificated at Talking Philosophy and Kansas Thoughts.
Yeah, I guess you’re right. A born-again accommodationist, fresh and clean and with that new-car smell. That didn’t last too long, though.
His skills as a poet might be less-than-stellar, but his skills as a fiction writer, apparently, are worse. If I understand her right, Ophelia became suspicious because certain commenters’ posts were written in a style that reminded her of old TJ. Hey, way to give your characters each their own unique voice, Wally.
No not quite. He was pretty skilled at it, really – except for the part about hiding his odd obsessiveness about a small (tiny) set of gnus. It was a mistake to comment on blogs that Jerry or I had just posted about. It was a mistake to mention us or our websites so often. It was a mistake to repeat tropes like “as an atheist I am embarrassed.” Things like that. But his overall style – that wouldn’t have done it by itself. It was off – it was too stiff, too formal, too actory – but that could be anyone.
I’m instructing him how to do it better next time. But the way to do it better next time is to be more like a normal person, and that would entail not pitching a fit about everything I do every other day. Space it out a bit and it just becomes part of life, which is fair. He can disagree with me. Anyone can disagree with me. It’s this fucking obsessive nagging that I get tired of! [she said, her voice rising to a scream] It’s this weird neurotic I just can’t leave it alone picking that 1) gets irritating 2) looks bat-shit crazy and 3) gives the game away if you’re trying to pass as not the guy who did the same crazy routine six months ago.
I’m not that god damn interesting, and I’m not that important. It’s funny what a lot of people I have examining my every internet word under a microscope.
Of course in a sense I shouldn’t complain, because I could just decide oh my, yes, thank you for noticing, I really am that important; thank you so much for talking about me all the time. How very flattering!
Meanwhile the culture war continues. Our enemies will very clearly try any sneaky method to attack us. But our critical minds only go to show the power of the very world view we seek to defend, and that is our advantage.
Now Egbert, I just got done chiding Andrew Lovley a few days ago for his “rats and spies” comment. Are you trying to undercut me? If so, I warn you that my secret decoder ring has special powers that I have not yet revealed, and you would not want to be on the receiving end when I reveal them.
Oh Ophelia, I disagree with your assessment of how interesting you are.
I don’t read boring people. I read you a lot.
And Coyne, and Myers, and MacDonald, and a few others.
Not one of them boring.
Ophelia is my favourite blogger. What can I say? She’s very important to me!
Yeah, there should be a way to measure the frequency of first visit to bookmark. I don’t remember how I was first sent here, but I distinctly remember thinking Against Fashionable Nonsense seemed like something I might want to follow. I am grateful for the intuition.
I shouldn’t have been so skeptical about whether this was the real Tom Johnson. Nice detective work.
Sean, #29
How can you say that with a straight face – so many commentors on this blog and whyevolutionistrue appear as though smack talking about acommodationists is their favorite pastime. It’s appears as if there is something negative to say, it ought to be directed at accommodationists. Obviously there are those who direct nearly all their ire toward gnu atheists in a similar fashion, but it is most certainly not a one-way street. There is a lot of scapegoating, and I’m not suggesting that I have been entirely innocent of it myself… although I am making an effort to be more direct with my critiques and speaking less generally.
Egbert:
Hamilton Jacobi:
Oh snap, a claim I made has been supported by evidence. Pigs are flying in the air, and I gain a shred of cred. Thanks Egbert, sorry Hamilton.
@ Andrew
EVERY time — not just most times, or some times, but EVERY frakkin’ time — that I see any discussion of accommodationism by OB or Jerry (or other gnu atheist bloggers), it is in response to either (1) some accommodationist once again trotting out the same tired old mis-characterizations of militant/dogmatic/rude/scientistic/etc. gnu atheists, launching the same oft-refuted claims that we should STFU with no more actual evidence or reasoning in support of the claims than the last fifty times they spouted off about us, to which some of us naturally respond with mockery, disdain, and even invective; or (2) NCSE or some similar organization has again overstepped bounds and insisted on the compatibility of science, to which we object in perfectly civil terms with clear arguments.
Given that context, your characterization of the occasions for and nature of criticisms aimed at accommodationists is just another example that falls under (1). You are tiresome. Find an instrument that plays more than just the one sour note over and over.
Wait! That’s it! The perfect metaphor!
Accommodationists are the vuvuzela players of atheism.
I’m the “colleague” that also attended the educational outreach event TJ ranted about; the blog masters can confirm this for you if you so desire. Yes, the event described by Wally in the OnEarth link (http://www.onearth.org:8887/node/1090) is the same event as the one described by TJ in ‘Exhibit A.’ All I want to say about that is that it was one of many educational outreach events Dr. Rissler’s lab has led (see: http://web.mac.com/ljrissler/lab/Outreach.html ), where we showed amphibians and reptiles and talked about biodiversity in the Southeast. It was all low-key and professional, and there was no “shouting forced laughter” at anyone. The end.
I have the feeling that Egbert’s ‘Once more to the breach…’ comment was meant to be a little ironical, and amusing in its rather hyperbolic tone.
@ Tim Harris:It doesn’t sound like ironical hyperbole to me, but maybe we’re both just experiencing a little confirmation bias ;)
Props to commenters bringing up psychological concepts, I anticipate many great insights coming from a deeper examination of them and their relevance to / implications for the issues important to us.
Cathy,
Thank you for coming forward with this information. It serves as yet another example of Wally’s fondness for lying for effect.
Sidenote: British slang
WALLY
To be nerd, geek or loser.
by H. P., Toronto, ON, Canada, Jan 23 1998 (Edit definition)
dork.
by Anonymous, Jun 27 1998 (Edit definition)
A person who’s company is found to be undesireable or uninspiring.
by Xander J., Cambridge, MA, USA, Jan 06 2000 (Edit definition)
http://onlineslangdictionary.com/definition+of/wally
ActualLOL.
Having read the other thread, there’s two points I’d make from a cyberculture point of view.
The first is that netiquette can be abused and that anonymous trolls are a classic example of this. Respecting anonymity is a strong social norm online, but so is not being a troll. People don’t have to materially support trolls in attacking them.
The second is that the worst trolls are often perfectly meek and well liked in real life. This fact doesn’t in any way suggest that they are not trolls online, that we should see their actions in the context of them ordinarily being a nice person, or that their chosen targets are in some way to blame for the troll’s different behaviour online.
@Ken Pidcock re BioLogos: but BioLogos is still basically saying that science shows that fundamentalists have the wrong beliefs. I don’t understand why it’s noble and sophisticated when coming from them, but militant and naive when coming from (new) atheists.
And so it should be. But only within certain limits. Wally Smith didn’t see anything wrong with trying, on The Intersection, to get someone fired from their job because he disagreed with their argument. That is a far bigger no-no in terms of netiquette. If one strays beyond certain limits then you place your own anonymity at risk. Where that limit lies may vary from person to person but the sort of dishonest behavior that Smith carried out had him frequently dancing on the far side of most peoples idea of what constitutes reasonable behavior. Considering his disgustingly mysoginistic insults towards Ophelia and his campaign of online harassment against her. Even after that he was given a chance to escape censure. He threw away that opportunity. He has nobody to blame but himself.
@Cathy Newman
Thanks for that comment Cathy. Considering the way you were portrayed by ‘Tom Johnson’ on The Intersection I hope he has apologized to you personally and I hope that Chris Mooney has done likewise for facilitating and promoting the lie.
1: I shouldn’t have been so iffy about whether that was the return of Tom Johnson.
2: Revealing his name was the right thing to do.
3: And it just gets me that he is named Wally – as in slang for an idiot Wally. Life, sometimes just seems too perfect.
4: Given his own writing on the event, and that of other sources who were there – Chris Mooney is not a journalist’s backside. He isn’t even the product of a journalist’s backside. We can tell from this he did zero checking of his source – heck he didn’t even check whether the account he was given was consistent with that his source gave elsewhere.
The more we learn of this case the worse the impression we get of Mooney’s professional conduct. I would be highly dubious of hiring him to write anything to do with actual facts. I am sloppy in some of what I put on my blog (normally because I want to make the joke) but this, this goes beyond that. This is being a credulous idiot.
Given his own writing on the event
Should read
Given Wally’s own writing on the event using his real name
dirigible wrote:
And that is something that is very, very wrong with Netiquette.
Well over a decade ago, a nasty little woman made some pseudo-threats to me in an e-mail. So, I mentioned it publicly. She went ballistic at my “violating her privacy.” So, I contacted her local police about the threats. She’s never bothered me since.
In retrospect, I only wish that I had published her name and the whole e-mail verbatim immediately in as many online venues as I could think of and immediately contacted the cops also.
I’m for maximum feasible “violation of privacy” for all liars, people who make threats, etc.<
If I’d been Ophelia, I would have blown this guy’s cover a long, long time ago, without asking anyone’s advice.
Incidentally, I learned well from my experience with the nasty little witch. The next time someone threatened me – a crooked collection agency that was trying to make me and my wife pay someone else’s delinquent debts – I just called the FBI. Oh, how the crooks squealed! But, oh how willing they were to do exactly what I told them to do from then on.
It was fun watching them squirm.
Dave Miller in Sacramento
Hello Halo Pie and all.
Finally I can dish out some stories.
It is not widely known that some intense backroom drama occurred in which Wally filed a formal complaint against me. At my blog I give the lowdown, which includes one of my emails to Rissler.
Hi Cathy. For the sake of the UA bio grad students I am glad that Wally’s identity is out. It seemed especially rude for him to spread the blame among just a handful of people. (Of course, you’re at UCD now.) What kind of reactions did the bio grads have to the Wally situation?
As Dr. Johnson said, approximately, a fly may sting a horse, but it remains a fly. The big opponents of atheism are people like Oprah Winfrey or the purveyors of the ubiquitous religion of success. “If you try hard enough you can get whatever you want” is clearly unsupported by evidence, but more people believe that than believe in transubstantiation.
@Deen:
If people think that religion should be reconciled to science, all of the work will have to be done by the religious. BioLogos is doing that work, and I’m glad that they are. In the course of it, they denigrate atheism and say that atheists misrepresent science. Well, duh. That doesn’t bother me, and I don’t think it bothers many.
What does bother me is being told that, in the interest of promoting science literacy, the attitude of scientists toward religion should be conciliatory. I see no evidence that this will lead to any positive outcomes, and it means abetting religion’s deception of the next generation.
I can’t be having with all this accommodation. I tried it once anyway and I wasn’t very good at it. I’m a scientific naturist: expose it all, I say. Accommodationists are trying to put fig leaves over the magnificent genitalia of science, just in case some people might have an attack of the vapours over a glimpse of even flaccid reason. I don’t see anything to be ashamed of.
Hi
Just stopped by to steal that line from Steve. YOINK!
Magnificent genitalia of science indeed. lol Oh, I’ll be using that one.
Thanks for commenting, Cathy.
Anyone who missed it – be sure to read Cathy’s comment! # 72
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2011/hammill-the-prodigal/#comment-75837
@Oedipus:
Where exactly?
Oh that old thing … never mind :)
A question: if I understand it right, Mooney knew who Wally was, and knew where he worked, and knew he went with someone else to this conference. Couldn’t he have checked with this person (who we now know is Cathy) about the events? Surely that couldn’t have been very hard, right?
BC – well I don’t suppose Wally told him who the colleague was…and I don’t suppose he asked, either. I think he didn’t know what he didn’t know – Rumsfeld was right about unknown unknowns.
But he should have. That’s the core problem, as has been said many times. The story meshed with what he (for some strange reason) enjoys thinking, which is that new atheists are Bad People. Thus he simply failed to be skeptical about what Wally told him; he failed to do due diligence. And that failure is particularly glaring because the story was so implausible on its face. There was no need for deep thought; it was just obviously a silly made-up clunker. I said that at the time. Russell said that at the time.
Oh well.
It’s true you know. I don’t know why the anti-gnus even bother. How much of a problem can we be when there are Oprahs and countless other massively popular yay-religionists? We’re as diluted as homeopathy.
OB #94
It took readers on the previous thread less than 20 minutes to find him, and the account of the conference. You’d expect a ‘journalist’ to be able to do as much…
#96
Sorry, meant convention, not conference
Physicist dave
Not in the general case. In this specific case , Tom Johnson had no right to anonymity considering all his actions. But really you find atheists who wont reveal their true names for very good reasons or gay people who haven’t come out of the closet yet but are comfortable doing so anonymously. The netiquette exists for a reason. That it is sometimes misused is no reason to think that there is something very very wrong with it. I prefer to leave it as the persons choice and evaluate on a case by case basis.
Ophelia
To me the worst part of the whole matter is when things were finally revealed as fake , Mooney couldnt simply apologize to all the people he had maligned – he spent his time explaining why he believed the deception. That one can make a mistake, I can understand, but refusal to properly acknowledge it – that broke this camels back.
Deepak, yes, and in addition he not only didn’t apologize to me, he and SK actually wrote a post maligning me. He’s a strange guy.
He’s a strange guy
Ophelia, have you considered teeth whitening? It will put you in a different light as far a Mooney is concerned.
{Ducks fire from Snark hunter}
Apropos bad language: maybe I’ve been reading Jeremy’s blog too much, but the other day, when my son blurted out “Colgate!,” I said “Now you’ve really asked for it!” and made him wash his mouth out with, er… toothpaste. Turns out he had really been asking for it, so everyone was happy in the end.
The toothpaste that brought Tony and W together…
Deepak Shetty wrote to me:
Of course, I will generally respect the confidentiality of people who behave with reasonable levels of honesty or courtesy.But if someone threatens me or lies in a malicious manner, I will “out” them without any thought for the consequences to them – in those circumstances, I will cheerfully “out” gays, atheists, etc.There is no “right” to not have the public’s knowing basic facts about a person: indeed those facts are normally matters of public record (e.g., at the Department of Motor Vehicles). Keeping silent about another person is a matter of courtesy, not a “right,” and that courtesy is only earned by the other person’s being courteous.“Netiquette” is wrong about this, legally and morally: A lot of “netizens” think that if you say something really nasty to someone in an e-mail, that person really is obligated not to publicize it.On the contrary, they are morally obligated to publicize it, so that everyone knows a jerk as a jerk.I certainly do not want to pick on Ophelia, but I actually think her fault was in not blowing the whistle long, long ago. I hope she and everyone learns from this: respecting the “privacy” of little lying thugs only encourages them.There needs to be enormously less respect for the privacy of jerks and thugs on the ‘Net.Dave
Ophelia,
I suspect that your fears over damaging Wally or his career were groundless. I’ve been personally observing pathological liars for fifty years – in personal life, among clergymen, in the professions (medicine and law), in the academic world, in industry, and, of course, like everyone else, among our political “leaders.”
They almost never pay a significant price when they are “outed.” Bill Clinton, for example, is now more popular than ever. And, Bush fils seems to be unrepentant about all those who died because of his lies about WMDs.
Any prospective employer of Wally’s will likely view this whole matter as the equivalent to Wally’s having been removed as vice-president of the local garden club – i.e., a tempest in a teapot among some crazy sectaries. If it has any negative effect at all, it will simply be amazement that Wally was foolish enough to bother with any of us at all.
And, Wally, will do it again. And again and again and again…. After all, what price is he really paying? I will be very surprised if he is not at it again in well less than a year.
Pathological lying has a very high recidivism rate.
Dave
Dave, it’s not that I was respecting his privacy, or that I had fears over damaging him or his career. It was partly, if I remember correctly, that other people had or pretended to have such fears, and I was at that time very tired of being subjected to sustained online smearing. I think I was reluctant to provide ammunition for even more sustained online smearing.
But it was also that information about him was conditional on secrecy about his identity. It no longer is.
I was in no sense tenderly concerned about his welfare. There was one day, when he seemed to have repented and confessed (as “William”), when I was willing to say ok goodbye go away and sin no more. But it was quickly revealed that he wasn’t “William” and he hadn’t told the truth, so even that minimal treaty was abrogated.
I really hate this idea that I had fears about damaging him!
He damaged me – not the other way around. I had every right to say who he was. I really didn’t refrain from doing that then to be nice to him. He’s not entitled to generosity from me. I hate the idea that I was being damply kind to Wally. Wally has damaged a lot of people, and I was far more concerned about them than I was about him.
If Wally damaged a lot of people (an assertion I’m not disputing), then don’t things need to change? Whatever Gnu Atheism is, or whatever movement structure has arisen, it would seem to be in need of some protection strategy if one person can do so much harm. What exactly are the vulnerabilities, and how can they be reduced?
I can’t go into detail, but there are always things people can do, and some people do them.
Steve’s question is pertinent and links to what I was already trying to get at a couple of days ago: we need to understand what is really motivating our detractors (those who claim to represent the atheist side, at least), for nothing will be solved unless we know where they’re really coming from (very little of what they’ve said openly rings true – and I don’t mean just that Wally Smith seems to come from a thoroughly Christian background from which he never departed). We will simply be more effective in countering attacks if we know what it is that motivates them. It is up to us to use all that has transpired recently to our advantage, in every possible sense. I know it’s the weekend, but I’m amused by the deafening silence coming from several sources with an interest in these developments.
Deepak:
This is somewhat beside your point, but in this case I don’t believe Wally is an atheist. I outline the evidence here.
Sorry to seem like a blog whore on this thread. It would be impolite to copy over huge comments here; screenshots are also involved. As you can tell I’m retired from blogging anyway. I’ve set the comments to 100 per page to reduce sluggishness.
Cathy Newman,
Thanks very much for posting here.
Can you tell us if Wally is even an atheist, as he always claimed in his major personas that we were subjected to?
He’s a puzzling fellow.
I can tell you that: no, he’s not, he’s a Christian.
Hey it’s fine, Oedipus. You did lots of work on this.
I second the thanks to Cathy. Although the evidence I’ve seen is pretty clear-cut, I don’t think it’s redundant to ask those with personal experience of Wally this question. I would be interested to know how he represented himself in person, whether there was any ambiguity or whether he seemed to have any question marks in the identity he showed outwardly.
There was considerable discussion of this on the Wally thread at Pharyngula this morning.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/tom_johnson_aka_wally_smith_ex.php
I think what motivates the core detractors is a desire to ingratiate themselves with The Great Majority by othering the despised minority. I’ve said that before, but…it sticks out, for me, so I keep saying it. It’s a desire to be Mainstream. It’s “political” in a rather narrow and parochial sense. It’s some kind of weird drive to be normal and acceptable and Not Extreme. It gets on my nerves, because I think people should grow out of that after childhood.
That’s not what motivates the more…erm…unhinged detractors though. What motivates them seems to be more like a free-floating rabid hatred.
All this is pure armchair psych.
Cathy,
Another question: was Wally’s report of the outreach event as “Wally Smith” also a work of fiction?
Did an elementary-aged child really ask “Why do these things even matter?”
Did an older man really respond “Because God created them, and it’s our job to make sure they stay around,” he
Was it then that a rumble of “mm-hmm’s” and head nods rippled through the congregation?
And did this really happen?
Stewart – sure, I know – I just burst in because I’m here, and who knows where anyone else is, you know?
It’s also true though that Cathy may not want to say more.
Thanks for pointing to it, Ophelia (I catch all of PZ’s posts, but I cannot do the same for all the comment threads there). Interesting, plenty of disagreement there, too. Some things are plausible, others less so. Perhaps there is something to seeing a place that looks like the high ground and rushing to occupy it. Rational enough not to be credulous believers themselves, reasonable enough to keep friendly communication with moderate believers wide open. And they rush for what they see as that high ground not because of a great internal conviction, but because they think it will make them look good. They will look even better if the majority to which they don’t belong perceives them as the reasonable wing of those horrible atheists, like the political arm of Hamas, that is never connected to any terror attacks. Except that the political wing of Hamas tries to excuse the military wing, not deliberately make it look worse than it is. But then, they are parts of the same organisation, while we are unherdable atheists. That why the accommodationists piss down only one slope of their high ground. They don’t need to look good to us, but they need us to look bad to make them look good to others.
It sounds and feels silly to doubt the atheistic bona fides of anyone, but then, to me it seems silly that anyone can actually be a believer in religion.
We know there are plenty of powerful interests that want our enterprise to fail. Has to be the case; there’s too much money in religion for anyone receiving it to part with it willingly. Can the sum total of organised attempts to ruin us through artificially fomented division be the stuff coming out of Templeton? Seems unlikely to me. The only question in my mind is who is a personally motivated detractor and who is in the service of the next Wedge strategy. How do we tell them apart?
Ophelia and/or Cathy,
Do you know in what sense Wally is a “Christian”?
I looked at some things said by Rev. Barbara Taylor Brown:
From that, I can’t tell if she’s one of those Episcopalians who’s basically an atheist or agnostic in Christian drag. For all I can tell from that quote, she could be the next Spong. If Wally is a big fan of hers, he might be an atheist of sorts and a “Christian” of sorts too.
@Ophelia
Not the words I would use , but I dont want Stangroom to publish my comments so I wont mentions the ones I would :)
@Oedipus
Doesn’t surprise me. Great work as usual from you.
Somebody who lies, hides behind false identities, tries to imply that others support his position by making his points multiple times under different aliases and–wait for it–calls himself a scientist? Yeah, there’s somebody who’s experimental results I’d believe…
@Physicist Dave
Again no disagreement about this particular case.
But Im sure you will also see anonymous commenters venting about some accomodationists in say Pharyngula or even here during the Kazez episode. (Profanities/insults instead of threats but boundaries are blurred). Im not sure an outing is justified in these cases.
I don’t agree that accommodation is motivated primarily by the desire of accommodationists to ingratiate themselves with believers. I think they’re probably concerned with the threat of atheism to the unwashed masses. Most have likely never known atheists without a graduate education, and maybe assume they don’t exist. The presumption is that the average person – that is, the person well below the accommodationist – needs her myths lest she despair or turn to crime.
You can pick up a bit of this in the writing about how important faith is to how many people.
Ken – they don’t talk about that though.
I think the reason I think this about some of them is because of the language they choose. It betrays a visceral distaste. I could be wrong, they could be choosing it cold-bloodedly for rhetorical reasons…but I think it’s revealing.
Of course, our language also reveals a visceral distaste, but then we’re up front about that. Yes: we have a visceral distaste for religion, along with reasons for the distaste. But some of the anti-gnus seem compulsive about the “ew ick” language.
Ophelia wrote to me:
Thanks for the clarification: we agree.
Sorry you ever had to deal with this nonsense at all.
All the best,
Dave
Could you explain this further? I mean – to essentially regurgitate something I posted elsewhere – if Michael Ruse, Jean Kazez and Jerry Stangroom are trying to position themselves as the “mainstream” equivalent to Dawkins, Hitchens and Dennett they’re stupider than any “gnu” could possibly imagine. Those three guys – as well as, say, Harris, Hawking, Weinberg, Pinker, Pullman, Grayling et cetera – are (and no disrespect to them) far more successful and widely respected than they are.
[Editorial comment: I was going to delete this but there has been much discussion of it so that would confuse things. I’m leaving it in place but I totally disavow it. In fact I think it’s the work of an agent provocateur – but I disavow it either way, whether it’s trickery or “sincere.” OB]
Just to follow up on my earlier comment about the despicable Jean Kazez: on the earlier thread, I mentioned that I was having a pleasant discussion with her about her claim that philosophy is just so hard that it cannot be communicated to ordinary people. Turns out that dear little Jean has indeed banned me, although I was not addressing the “Gnu Wars” at all and was merely sincerely and politely questioning her pompous claims about the hoi polloi not being able to understand the deeply profound thoughts of philosophers like herself. Anyone who doubts that I was civil and polite can read my comments at http://kazez.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-not-to-say.html .
Jean falsely accused me of getting “more and more aggressive…” and hence I had to be banned.
My main conclusion is that Jean is a fraud as a philosopher.
I have been a non-combatant in the great “Gnu Atheist” Web War, but this peripheral encounter with Jean is causing me to suspect that the “Accommodationist” side are indeed all insane.
Since lying little Jean accused me of being “aggressive,” I decided to live up to her expectations and sent her the following parting message to satisfy her obvious Freudian need for aggressiveness:
By the way, everyone: are all the folks on the “Accommodationist” side of the great Gnu Wars mentally ill, or does it just seem that way?
In the event that mad Jean makes any threats against me (which I half expect, given my experience with demented souls in the past), I shall indeed contact her Departmental Chair and University Administration and inform them that unless they terminate her, they are risking being included in any legal action I am forced to pursue against her: I have no inclination to turn the other cheek.
I’m a “two eyes for an eye; two teeth for a tooth” kind of guy.
Dave
Failures? Well, if 3 PhD’d authors are failures that does nothing for this unemployed dropout’s ego.
Stewart
I’m inclined to think a lot of it comes from how it’s hard work to stand up for the truth. Someone who does it all the time is annoying and it gets exhausting being that person. It’s also hard biting your tongue and letting people be wrong, but if you can convince yourself that you become more persuasive by being less insistent on the difference between true and not true, the you can pretend to have it both ways. You help bring people to the truth without making your motives plain and wasting everyone’s time dealing with the backlash.
But, however adept you become at avoiding the objections to yourself, you still share a label with those who aren’t so decorous, and thus you end up getting grief for what others are doing. Since it would utterly defeat your purpose to say things like, “Well, I agree they’re very uncivil, but does that change whether what they’re saying is true?” you instead have to silence them and demonize them. This has the apparent benefit of making those you’re trying to bring to the light take you more seriously. The problem is, of course, that you can’t ever take advantage of their attention in the name of your goal without alienating them yourself. (It would be amusing watching people like Massimo Pigliucci finding that out the hard way if they actually learned from it.)
[…] blogosphere to resume his previous behavior under the name “Hammill”. Ophelia Benson uncovered the evidence. It has also been revealed that “Tom Johnson” did not come from an atheist family as he […]
To “PhysicistDave”:
I think Ms. Kazez is a lousy philosopher and she might not be intellectually fully honest, but those are fairly common faults in people. Her biased comments policy might be irritating, but it is endemic in the accommodationist camp. However, the event itself (banning you) cannot be called a milestone in history of human rights crimes in any way.
Therefore I think your anonymous letter to her was utterly tasteless. It certainly removed any doubts in the mind of Ms. Kazez that banning you was the right thing. Publicizing it here anonymously is a disservice to those gnus who feel that bullshit can be called bullshit rationally without going personal. The irony is that it is published in a thread where we discuss the massive failure of one (once) anonyme commenter.
I think there will be plenty of other commenters here who distance themselves from your ranting.
PhysicistDave
Because they (we) are annoying. It’s not in most people’s nature to enjoy being confronted with one’s wrongness at every turn in every situation. It’s no fun to be constantly reminded one’s worldview is not as sound as one pretends. Normal people give each other their lies as a lubricant against social friction and are understandably irritated by those who don’t play along.
That said, when someone is being annoying in this way, it does not mean she or he is doing something wrong. What makes me a Gnu is that I don’t consider the discomfort of those annoyed a valid excuse for their failure to listen or, worse, their attempts to shut the person up. But when so few others share that perspective, being that annoyance can get rough. Some of us persevere and take pride in it, but others…
By the way, as someone who is mentally ill herself, I find your harping on that theme tiresome and uninformed. Wally most likely is mentally ill, but the Mooneys and Kazezes of the world aren’t. They’re just willing, like a great many people, to sacrifice their integrity for some relevance.
I agree with Matt K.
PhysicistDave, your ranting on the tail end of the Pharyngula thread does nothing to temper your argument. Wishing death on people like Kazez is so far beyond the pale of rational discourse that the only thing it achieves is drawing attention to yourself. You are already being accused of being a sock by the pharyngula regulars and, considering the role that socks and agent provocateurs have played in this story to date you can’t blame us for feeling a little touchy.
Matti K. said:
I’m sure there will. That may not stop snark hunters from quoting Dave as a representative example of gnu hostility, though.
Sorry, Dave. I think that was massive overreaction. I see a lot one can criticise Jean for, but nothing that merits hopes for her early demise. And it’s precisely because we really do not fit the stereotype she and others have abetted our being tarred with, that we have to tell you this. This has nothing to do with your right to say what you said; unlike the accommodationists who seem to be seeking to limit what we can say, I say that you have every right to say what you want and we have the right to avoid guilt by association by saying that we distance ourselves from the more extreme things you said. It can be that simple and I wish the accommodationists would take that line.
Ah yes, but the potency …!
I, too, feel an urgent need to distance myself from Dave’s comment, especially as I posted after him on this thread. In many ways his post at #129 reminds me of the late Erik Naggum (see http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2009/06/24/erik_naggum_rip for an obituary). Oh, and Jean Kazez can “out” people too: Dave’s comment is now on her blog for all to see and comment upon.
@Matti K: indeed, here’s one more who’ll happily condemn physicistdave for that post. Hey, what do you know, unlike the claims of the anti-gnus, gnus actually do have civility standards. And death wishes are beyond them.
I don’t know whether “PhysicistDave” has been fabricated to try to discredit the Gnu Atheist movment or whether it’s just someone who needs to chill out. In the circumstances – the latest on “Where’s Wally?” plus the ongoing hunting of the snark – I’m suspicious that it’s the first.
Sheesh. I agree with Russell and the others.
And a glance at the Pharyngula thread adds to the suspicions. “PhysicistDave” is a either a fiction created by someone who needs help or simply someone who needs help.
My post was made on the assumption that Dave Miller from Sacramento (he’s given us this himself, no outing necessary), the homeschooling physicist is real. That identity has also posted elsewhere, not only on the subjects dear to our hearts. I think we all agree that there are sometimes justifications for real anger, but it becomes counter-productive when it gets the better of one (compare PZ and Jeremy Stangroom for examples of what lies on either side of that line).
Oh, and Dave’s comment is indeed on show at Jean’s blog. But there is a gap, apparently. She lets him appear to go from persistent to abusive in a jump, saying he got aggressive and that she had to delete a few posts. I do not know what the escalation looked like. Jean does want all to see what Dave is like at full throttle, but prefers us to use our imagination as to how he got there. To her credit, it seems that she has not explicitly said that this is typical of all of us.
Full (unnecessary) disclosure: I saw Dave’s extreme comment just before going to bed, knew what I thought of it, but wanted to sleep on it and also to see how others reacted before pushing the conversation in any particular direction. Nice to see that our “hive mind” does not condone everything and we did it without Ophelia weighing in at all.
Right. I used the wrong word in referring to Jean letting Dave’s comment through. Sorry about that.
“Liberalism is, after all, merely Christianity minus the woo-woo.”
Bullshit. Just one example should be able to dispel that nonsense: Freedom of religion – a liberal value if there ever was one – can hardly be called a Christian value, now can it?
“Frankly, I am inclined to agree with the well-known psychiatrist Thomas Szasz that mental illness is a myth and that those of you who claim mental illness are malingerers.”
So instead of a Christian without the woo-woo, you decided to become a Scientologist without the woo-woo? Yeah, there’s a big improvement…
“And I never respond sympathetically to people like you who try to play the victim card.”
By the way, that wasn’t a “please have sympathy” card. That was an “I’m better informed than you are on this topic” card. I don’t think many here expect you to show any sympathy at all anymore, but is reading comprehension really too much to ask for?
Ms. Kazez was originally not directly involved in this TJ-fiasco, but was dragged in by Mr. Mooney for reasons that I do still not understand. Therefore she is very much OT in this thread. I hope even PhysicistDave understands this and stops analyzing publicly his personal views on Ms. Kazez. No one is interested and most people are embarrassed because of such juvenile attitude.
Regarding Mr. Smith: there are probably plenty of Wallies and PhysicistDaves around who never get outed. The content of their rants may even be libelous but they are accepted as inevitable noise which must be tolerated among the signal from the Internet. However, there are limits, as we have seen. I think it was Mr. Smith’s initial success that, in the end, caused his fall. Mr. Mooney provided this success by accepting the smears by “Tom Johnson” hook, line and sinker, when he promoted his views in his blog.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/10/22/exhibit/
Moreover, in a later article, Mr. Mooney showed his middle finger to gnus who dared to warn him about such gullibility.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/10/26/my-thanks-to-tom-johnson/
The same middle finger was (and is) obivous also in his generally biased way of managing the comments in his blog.
Naturally, when Mr. Smith was later shown to be a sock-puppeteer, lier and, especially, “Tom Johnson”, gnus were more than happy to dig the matter to the bottom. Finding out his identity was a piece of cake for many of them, but contrary to their militant and rude nature, they still respected his anonymity. It was only when Mr. Smith started the same shit again that he was outed.
In the end, it was the actions of Mr. Smith himself that got him outed and (as I undestand) lose his job. There is nobody else he can put the blame on. However, it is interesting to note that without Mr. Mooney’s promotion and with better management of the comment section on “Intersection”, “Tom Johnson” and other sockpuppets of Mr. Smith would have been of no interest to gnus. These pseudonyms would just have been pompous nobodies whose real identity would have been of no interest to anyone. A bit like PhysicistDave here.
Starting to regret sorta jumping to physdave’s defense over at Color’s…
Oh well the dig was worth it.
There is certainly a precedent for Wally flipping out when he gets exposed for wrongdoing. That was my first reaction when I saw PhysicistDave.
And there is a precedent for Wally flipping out via playing the atheist side in order to tarnish its image. Need I remind you of this incident? Here is Wally at his game:
Very next comment:
Bad Wally:
Concerned Wally:
Bad Wally:
Concerned Wally:
For more on Wally’s obsession with this stuff, see his puppetry on the Intersection. For newcomers here, the confirmed or confessed sock puppets alone are: bilbo, Brandon, Milton C., Patricia, Petra, Philip Jr., Polly-O, Seminatrix, Tom Johnson, Vyspyr (I probably missed a few). Any suspicious commenter on YNH without some established online presence should be considered a sock puppet.
@Matti K.: where did you hear he lost his job?
I may have written something to this effect in the second half of that paragraph. :-)
Ah, the late, great Erik Naggum [citation needed]. Erik was the person I had in mind when writing about the difference between online and offline perception above.
He’s also a classic example of someone that presumably otherwise intelligent people like and defend because they are a troll, not despite. Trolls get noticed, and it’s the squeaky wheels that gets the grease. Trolls are bullies, and some little boys like siding with bullies. Trolls can appear troubled, and that sets off some people’s nurturing instincts. I’m sure some of that has been at play here.
Deen: Oedipus wrote about it:
http://thebuddhaisnotserious.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/the-curious-case-of-the-youre-not-helping-blog/#comment-1194
Matti K, since Wally Smith is still listed as a graduate student at the UA but now has a different PhD supervisor I guess the “Dr Rissler booted you from her lab” quote simply means that his lies about the behavior of his supervisor got back to her and Wally was forced to switch labs. He didn’t lose his job.
PhysicistDave
Not cool. Seriously. She banned you – it happens – but there is no need to make it clear she was right to.
Thanks for the clarification, Sigmund. It still is a shitty situation for Mr. Smith. The fields of different supervisors tend to be far apart and switching field in the middle of graduate studies makes it very difficult to finish one’s thesis. Let’s hope Mr. Smith’s new supervisor will have no undue prejudices when employing Mr. Smith.
@Matti K.: thanks, There had been links to that thread, but I figured it was to document the history, I didn’t realize it was active again. Maybe it would’ve been better if Oedipus would have started a new thread, otherwise others who were equally reluctant to wade through 800+ comments would miss some of the excellent work he’s been doing. Like his comment showing that Wally did not, as he claimed, grow up in an atheistic family.
Jesus god.
I think Physicist Dave must be a provocateur.
You’re out of here, PD.
Matti,
It may be a very shitty situation for Wally. I assume that they didn’t fob him off on his new advisor without cluing him in, and the recent return to form will tell the new advisor he’s still a pathological liar.
I wouldn’t expect Wally to get a lot of glowing recommendations from the people he works with, and if he manages to finish his Ph.D., I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t manage to get the nearly sort of job he was hoping for.
Recommendation letters and the grapevine are often decisive in academic hiring, and the word is out that he’s a vicious, obsessive, out-of-control kook—not the kind of guy you’d want to hire for any job, but especially not a tenure-track job. (If he manages to hide his vicious kookiness until he gets tenure, you could be stuck with him for decades.)
I suspect he will have to do without a letter from Leslie Rissler, because she couldn’t honestly write him a good one. Then that will raise disturbing questions, and phone calls will be made—why did his former advisor/coauthor not write him a nice letter? Why didn’t he continue with her, given that he was on a roll?—with the end result that one way or another, he won’t get good job offers.
Even if he managed to get past that hurdle, I’d expect his reputation to catch up with him at some point on the tenure track, and create some weird and extremely stressful vibes in his work environment. People don’t like working with people they distrust, and it’s really not pleasant being distrusted. As soon as his reputation caught up with him, academic life would suck bigtime.
Even if he were able to escape his past, I just don’t think he can hide his unsuitability for such a job for that long. That’s a major reason why it takes years and years to get tenure—most kooks just can’t fake reasonableness for that long. Some manage, but I don’t think Wally has nearly that kind of self-control and discipline. If he did, he wouldn’t have returned to form, and wouldn’t have gotten outed.
I think he’s probably fucked, and he probably knows he’s probably fucked. Even if he’s only likely fucked, that would make the tenure track a considerably worse hell than it usually is—not worth it IMHO. It would just suck enormously to spend years and years working hard, knowing that you likely blew your chance before you even got to the starting gate.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Wally finishes the year, and leaves the U. of Alabama with a Masters degree, and looks for a non-academic job—or that if he doesn’t, he’s making an expensive mistake and wasting his time finishing a Ph.D.
If he does go on to finish the Ph.D., he should be on his best behavior if he doesn’t want people going out of their way to ensure that his reputation does catch up with him when it counts.
Some of Physicist Dave’s comments have been removed; sorry if that confuses subsequent discussion. I left the hydrogen bomb comment in place (for now) because it triggered a lot of comments (not surprisingly) but I disavow it.
PD’s wording and tactics are very interesting. Very Wally-esque. What’s the deal, Wally, you using a friend in Sacramento?
Now I have to read the end of that Pharyngula thread.
Goddam provocateurs.
I rather doubt it…
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/09/quote-of-day-by-physicistdave.html
(On the other hand, I doubted “Hammill” was this Wally fellow so I should perhaps assume the force is strong with Ophelia.)
I certainly don’t know that PD is Wally but by god he’s fer sher his ally. He’s fer sher magically saying and doing just what Wally would want said and done right now.
Good call, Ophelia. We don’t need sick puppies like that stinking up the joint.
I’m afraid he may be for real, though—one of those proudly semisociopathic egoist libertarians who give atheists a bad name. His “The Homeschooling Physicist” blog has been taken down, but if you google it you can find some cached pages. His name and town finds you more. Climate change skeptic, mental illness skeptic… bleah, bleah, bleah.
And a stay-at-home homeschooler. Think of the children! *shivers*
Too bad they don’t keep statistics on home school shootings. You really have to wonder.
Note Oedipus’s comment above (currently 151 but that could change). I had forgotten that incident. I sure do remember it now. It was another one of those times – blaring sirens, flashing red lights, voice in head shouting This is fake!!
His blog has been taken down, Paul? Do you know when?
I don’t know when or why.
Wally was always friendly (to me) in person–before the shit hit the fan last summer. But I haven’t seen him or heard from him since he found out I knew what was going on.
It looks like he started with a bunch of posts in August 2009, and the blog was still posting now and then up to October 2010. No idea if it was taken down shortly after that, or only more recently.
Google last cached his blog on 1 march 2011. so it’s only been taken down in the last week.
edit-o: “and the blog was still posting” should have just been “and was still posting.”
No surprise, he talks about natural rights and Ayn Rand.
I wouldn’t expect Wally to go to the trouble of faking being a libertarian, and actually linking to a faux libertarian blog; my guess is that he wouldn’t want to promote those ideas enough to fake it that well.
@117:
Of course, I now wish I had known at the time that I should’ve been more closely observing his every move. I doubt as much as you do that things went down exactly as he described (“Why do these things even matter?” From a kid? Really??). But I also don’t know any more than you do about its accuracy. All I know is it was very informal and professional, and we never spoke to the whole group at once–just a few people at a time as they rotated by our table.
(It’s hard to keep up with the comments on here. I’m sure I’ve probably missed some. And I never read PZ comment threads anyway…)
Cathy, it’s not normally anywhere near this active! I have trouble keeping up too.
It will all die down soon…if Wally has the sense to stop messing around.
It’s very suggestive that PD’s blog was taken down in the last few days.
Stephen,
Hmmm… that’s very interesting timing.
I suppose I could be wrong and Wally is a more dedicated provocateur than I thought. Who knows?
It would still only make sense to me if it turned out that “Dave Miller” regularly flew off the handle and made atheists and/or libertarians and/or AGW deniers look like idiots or sociopaths, and if it didn’t take much effort to fake the seemingly sincere education-oriented postings up. (E.g., by cutting and pasting from elsewhere.) I haven’t looked closely enough to see if that’s true.
I loved this, by the way.
After some googling, it turns out that PD is quite a prolific poster… his comments on the atheismisdead blog are very pro New Atheist, and often quite biting and perceptive.Very different to Wally, and neither a hint of accommodationism, nor any apparent attempt to make NAs look stupid.
Not that that in anyway excuses his behaviour here…
It makes him sound unWally-like though. Thanks for researching, Stephen.
This may be his Amazon commenter profile, which doesn’t sound very Wally-esque either.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/AKTQPARJI5B9P
Oedipus #152,
You reminded me that I pulled a Stangroom on Pharyngula in response to Wally Smith masquerading as “Petra” on the Intersection. :P
Petra claimed on the Intersection that people on Pharyngula had said all sorts of vile things to the tune of what you show “Bad” Wally Smith saying on Greg Laden’s blog. Indeed, a search of Pharyngula for key words did find some nasty stuff–copied and pasted from an insult generator, said by trolls, and said hyperbolically in response to hideous positions and/or actions taken by religious leaders or trolls. Great fun was had by all in reading the context around which those awful things were said instead of taking the Google search snippets as direct quotes stated sincerely from Pharyngula regulars and OMs, and Petra’s (Wally Smith’s) fabrication was, of course, nowhere to be found (not that that stopped it from being taken as TRUFAX by the Mooney groupies who were not sockpuppets of Wally Smith).
Dear, dear Petra; what a nice person she was.
Here is someone called “PhysicistDave” commenting on the Puffington Host
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/PhysicistDave?action=comments
He mentions that he is a Phd Physicist from Stanford and signs off with David Miller
And here is a Stanford physicist called David Millerhttp://ee.stanford.edu/~dabm/
[see Robert’s comment below – OB]
Although that David Miller didn’t get his Phd from Stanford as PhysicistDave claims to have
It all looks like good reason not to think it’s Wally though.
I’ve reworded tail end of my comment at TBINS about Wally not coming from an atheist family. The reason I brought up Dr. Rissler at the end was to explain how I came across that information: it was all background for my defense against Wally’s UA complaint (originally believed to be a police complaint). This was a serious action on his part, resulting in a couple phone conversations between myself and Rissler (who knows my identity along with a few others).
But Wally’s religious views have nothing to do with the state of his relationship with Rissler. When I re-read my comment, I saw that a persecution-minded religious person could be eager to believe otherwise.
Since I have not spoken with Rissler since the summer, I have only second-hand knowledge of her and Wally parting ways, so I’ve removed that final assertion in my comment. I wrote it in order to drive home the fact that Wally’s complaint against me was frivolous and did not impress Rissler. Disclosing new information was a side-effect of that.
FWIW, I have no inside information about Leslie Rissler at all. I’ve never spoken to her, and am basically just assuming that she’s as good a scientist as she seems to be, and has some fairly standard standards.
Likewise, I assume that her colleagues at University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa have similar standards, and that the poor guy who’s stuck with Wally as an advisee for now isn’t at all happy about it. Wally is a problem child—or, rather a problem 26-year old man, which is far worse. This shit goes on your permanent record, because it’s out in the open on the internet.
Here’s a cached version of Wally Smith’s Curriculum Vitae, from his WordPress Account.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mrH9fSizE4UJ:walterhsmith.wordpress.com/curriculum-vitae/+%22Walter+Smith%22+%22piedmont+college%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=ubuntu&source=www.google.com
For the benefit of anyone googling him up, this is a Walter H. Smith, a.k.a. W.H. Smith, a.k.a. Walter Smith, a.k.a. Wally Smith, from Gainesville, GA, who went to Piedmont College and got a degree in biology under Dr. Carlos D. Camp, and then on to graduate studies with Leslie J. Rissler in Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama (at Tuscaloosa).
His publications include:
Smith, W.H. In prep. Southeastern Slimy Salamander (Plethodon grobmani). In: Outdoor Alabama – Alabama Wildlife and their Conservation Status. Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Montgomery, AL.
Rissler, L.J. and W.H. Smith. 2010. Mapping amphibian contact zones and phylogeographic break hotspots across the U.S. Molecular Ecology. 19:5404-5416.
Smith, W.H. 2010. Amphibians and Reptiles of the Talladega National Forest. USDA Forest Service. (Collaborative field guide/checklist project with Auburn University and USDA Forest Service).
Smith, W.H. and L.J. Rissler. 2010. Quantifying disturbance in terrestrial communities: abundance-biomass comparisons of herpetofauna closely track forest succession. Restoration Ecology. 18:195-204.
Smith, W.H. 2009. Spotted Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus conanti). In: Outdoor Alabama – Alabama Wildlife and their Conservation Status. Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Montgomery, AL.
Smith, W.H. 2009. Ocoee Salamander (Desmognathus ocoee). In: Outdoor Alabama – Alabama Wildlife and their Conservation Status. Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Montgomery, AL.
Smith, W.H. 2009. Cave Salamander (Eurycea lucifuga). In: Outdoor Alabama – Alabama Wildlife and their Conservation Status. Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Montgomery, AL.
@185: Professor David A. B. Miller from Stanford is a Scotsman, a very reasonable guy (I’ve know him for many years; we’ve done IEEE committee work together, he’s a past president of IEEE LEOS), he’s won a ton of honors and awards, is quite far from the Sacramento location of PhysicistDave, and so is unquestionably not the same guy as the late departed ranter.
Thanks Robert. I definitely don’t want to tar anyone else with suspicion of being PD.
Most welcome, James; it was sincerely meant.
“Wally Smith,” “David Miller” – does anyone want to set up a study to determine if people with names that are a dime a dozen are more prone to cause trouble because they know it’ll be harder to find the right people to blame? :)
“No, you must be thinking of a different Orlando Figes…”
Ophelia, is there anything more you can say about how you know that he is a Christian?
I’ve given my reasons: Piedmont college (that quote is creepy!), Barbara Brown Taylor fan, and behavior befitting one who is working for a “higher purpose.” He sees himself as battling evil, and any means are acceptable when confronting evil because, well, it’s evil.
In another update to my post (ha, I almost said final update but I know better by now), I point to the debunking of his “atheist family” ploy. I stopped short of mentioning the possibility that he is a Christian because I don’t have conclusive evidence.
There are a million definitions for “Christian”, but there seems to be just one criterion for calling someone a Christian: that the person says he is a Christian, for whatever his definition of that is. Do you know if Wally calls himself a Christian?
Certainly there are many counterexamples, but I’d bet a cup of coffee that there’s something to that.
I actually think about that sometimes. Sam Harris, the author, for example—how many Sam Harrises do you suppose there are? Probably a lot. If my name were “Sam Harris,” I might be tempted to engage in shenanigans and then, when questioned, blame it on Sam Harris the author. It could be a nice little racket.
I think XKCD once suggested a fun online game: post long, complex, well-reasoned but inflammatory comments on blogs and sign them “Summer Glau”.
I think PhysicistDave is a distraction to the matter at hand. The one advantage is that he demonstrates that gnu atheists are, in fact, moderates!
As for the matter in hand, the Tom Johnson affair, the important point is what we can learn from it. One thing is the proper way to deal with evidential claims. Look at how long it took to get plenty of information about Wally Smith from just his name and location. If we could do that then so could others.
Chris Mooney knew Wally’s identity from his registration email address. Mooney first tried to verify the story when he contacted Smith AFTER he published the Exhibit A post (we know the timing because Tom Johnson states within the comments section of that post that Chris can contact him at that point if he wants to verify any of the details of his identity or story, demonstrating that Mooney had not verified anything when he posted Exhibit A.) Presumably the criticism he received from “the new atheist comment machine” prompted him to belatedly try to see if there was, in fact, some truth to his prime evidence.
In the “My Thanks To Tom Johnson” post of the 27th of October 2009 I had some interactions with ‘Tom Johnson’ where I tried to tease out some information about the ‘atheists behaving badly’ event.
Comment 110 Sigmund
“Give Chris the name of the pastor or church group where the bad behavior occurred and let him verify your important story.”
Comment 111 Tom Johnson
“Sigmund:
Chris knows the name of the group.”
Well, what possible use could that information be?
The group, we now know, was the Alabama Baptist Cooperative Fellowship.
Try typing the following into the search box of google.
Alabama Baptist Cooperative Fellowship “wally smith”
The very first hit is the report by Wally Smith that shows the entire bad atheist story was untrue. The simplest google search imaginable proves the story was a lie and yet Mooney failed to spot the fatal flaw in his efforts. And not only Mooney, presumably others such as Sheril Kirshenbaum and Jean Kazez must have been privy to the same information and yet nobody did even a basic google search?
That is a very important point that makes a mockery of all Chris Mooney’s posturing. Comment 82 on the “Exhibit A” post:
That was a long thread in which the question of verifying the story was a major issue. One thing very conspicuous by its absence is a comment from Mooney to calm the waters by saying that he had done any checking at all. He later writes about having been in touch with Wally Smith in October, but does not get more precise than that in terms of the date in question. In other words, it seems beyond doubt that he gave prominence to a smear first and later asked some questions.
Sigmund, I was unfortunately unable to make much sense of your paragraph that begins with “Style Definitions,” but since it’s such an uncharacteristic lapse, I shall not belabour the point further.
:)
“Sigmund, I was unfortunately unable to make much sense of your paragraph that begins with “Style Definitions,” but since it’s such an uncharacteristic lapse, I shall not belabour the point further.”
That’s what happens when I try to be tidy by composing my post in microsoft word before pasting into the comment box!
Thanks for the warning. Will not try it.
Ah, that’s the trouble with What you See Is Nothing Like What You Actually Get editors…
It’s not for nothing that WYSIWYG is easier to pronounce than WYSINLWYAG.
WYSINLWYAG… isn’t that somewhere in North Wales?
Tom Johnson is kind of like “God” that way. A big puffy creature invented by someone and then taken on trust by others.
When you look back at the “Exhibit A” thread and see the arguments some of TJ’s defenders were using to say (basically and mainly) “until you prove it’s a lie, why shouldn’t I believe it?” – well, you just know that that’s not the tack they would have been using if one of us had come along with an outrageous tall tale about accommodationists. No, in a case like that, no such arguments would have been acceptable.
Yes, SAWells, I believe it is North Wales, but it’s a very confusing place to visit; when you finally get there, you can never believe it’s the area you had been approaching.
At one point a few years ago, his Facebook said “non-denominational Christian” and he used to joke that he needed to change that. But I have no freakin’ idea what he believes–and honestly, I don’t really care.
The latest development in the ongoing saga… there are now no articles by Wally Smith available at onearth.org…
Thanks Ophelia, Oedipus, Cathy, Stewart, Stephen et al. for this fascinating story.
Would I be right in guessing that the publication must have done that, that he wouldn’t be able simply to yank them into oblivion himself? Hope someone archived them. Oedipus?
Gone but not forgotten.
Here’s a google cached version of the OnEarth article about the fabled outreach event:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DKqkVjk5eToJ:www.onearth.org:8887/node/1090+%22wally+smith%22+environmentalism+barbecue+religion&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.com
That’s the one (“Environmentalism, religion, and barbeque: the perfect combination?”) with the mythical addressing of the whole crowd, the bizarre question from a child, the older man saying goddidit, and the mythical hm-hmming spreading “through the congregation”.
Wally’s quite the fiction writer, isn’t he? (Whether he’s writing as Tom Johnson and saying the nasty New Atheists wrecked everything, or writing as himself and saying he made everything go perfectly smoothly and accommodatingly.)
Environmentalism, religion, and barbeque: the perfect combination?
by Wally Smith May 8, 2009
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green churches | partnerships | religion | science
Late last May, a colleague and I were asked to present an amphibian conservation program at the Alabama 4-H Center just outside Birmingham. As a graduate student studying evolutionary biology at the University of Alabama, I often speak to school groups and others about amphibian ecology, biodiversity, and conservation in general. But on this Saturday morning, pulling up to a packed pavilion and a trio of smoking barbeque cookers, I quickly noticed that this program would be different – we were to be presenters at the Alabama Baptist Cooperative Fellowship’s annual spring gathering.
An evolutionary biologist wandering into a crowd of 200 Southern Baptists in Alabama sounds like the start of some bad joke, or at least a recipe for disaster. After all, in my two short years as a graduate student in Tuscaloosa I’ve seen students nearly come to blows arguing over science and religion, and my colleagues have excitedly gone to debates between religious and scientific scholars that start with civility and end with all the name calling of a fifth-grade playground squabble. So I couldn’t figure out why I’d been asked to come out to a religious gathering to talk about conservation. To be witnessed to? Argued with? Chased out of town with pitchforks?
Thankfully, the answer was none of the above. The Alabama CBF had themed this year’s annual gathering around making churches green, devoting the weekend to discussing how to implement energy conservation in churches, saving the South’s wildlife, and generally spreading the word of environmental protection in conjunction with the gospel. My job in all of this was to show amphibians, and to talk ecology to a group of hungry adults and children who had gathered for the day.
While the Alabama CBFs mission is progressive, they aren’t alone in the faith-based world when it comes to embracing environmentalism. Green churches, as they’re being called, are spreading quickly throughout the nation, and throughout all denominations. The National Council of Churches for Christ, for example, is pushing carbon reduction and offering funding incentives to make churches green. In the Southern Baptist Convention, environmental stewardship is beginning to take a more prominent role in the group’s overall theology. The pastors and parishioners I’d be spending the day with would be talking energy conservation, taking guided hikes to learn native wildlife, and attending workshops on how to lessen their churches’ environmental impact.
In all of this, two things are obvious: no one is immune from the environmental threats, and coming up with solutions to those threats will take the cooperation of everyone. This latter point is especially true when it comes to turning a place like the Bible Belt green – it’s going to take an unlikely combination of faith, science, and politics to combat the effects of pollution and sprawl.
Linking these two often-different sides under a shared goal undoubtedly takes finding some common ground with which to start from, but could it be that we, as scientists and environmentalists, are the ones lagging behind in making this connection? This past February, the journal Analytical Chemistry published an editorial stating that public outreach “detracts” from scientific research. Dr. Jerry Coyne, one of the world’s foremost evolutionary biologists, recently wrote in his blog that we should stop “catering” to religious people and that the nation must become “a lot less religious” before we can accept scientific principles. More than a handful of bloggers and writers would echo that point.
While our philosophical differences will likely never find a resolution, they shouldn’t be an excuse for ignoring vital partnerships in protecting the environment. And finding some common ground may be simpler (and much more valuable) than it seems. As I fed a wriggling mealworm to a tiger salamander at the 4-H center and talked about amphibians’ ties to healthy wetlands, an elementary-aged child asked me the usual question that comes up when I show animals to a crowd.
“Why do these things even matter?”
Here was my chance, my opportunity to lecture about amphibians’ contributions to energy flow in ecosystems, about their intrinsic value as biodiversity, why anyone with least bit of education should understand why we need to protect diversity. Before I had my chance, an older man in the crowd piped up.
“Because God created them, and it’s our job to make sure they stay around,” he said simply. A rumble of “mm-hmm’s” and head nods rippled through the congregation. I suddenly felt like a preacher. The tiger salamander begged for another worm.
Could it really be that simple, finding some common ground for conservation? I’d like to think so. Here I was, my head full of fear-inducing facts about biodiversity loss and data from published studies, and the older man’s answer was more than enough to satisfy the child. My name-dropping of famous environmentalists and quoting of influential studies was going to have little more impact than speaking in Latin would have. Our reasons may have been different, but our goals were the same: conservation in the name of morality, of science, of God – whatever you wanted to call it.
Starting any kind of dialogue takes an ice-breaker, and on this Saturday morning I find it in a shared love for brightly-colored salamanders and slow-cooked barbeque. In things just as tangible as faith is unseen. Towards the end of the afternoon I eat lunch with a group of white-haired ministers dressed in khaki shorts and flip-flops, and we talk about football, religion, and yes, even science. We reach an agreement on none of them. While I’m placing my amphibians back in a cooler for the ride home, however, I notice a child struggling over a question at the “Seven Days of the Creation Quiz” at the table next to mine. “What day did God create the animals?” it says.
“Day six,” I tell him. I don’t feel the least bit guilty.
I’ve posted the full cached version – its got a few links so its stuck in moderation.
Here’s the google cached version of Wally Smith’s “New Book stresses the need for faith-based collaboration in combating climate change,” in which he sorta kinda reviews/recommends a book he admittedly hasn’t read. I guess the title was good enough for him.
There it is. Thanks Sigmund.
That thing of Paul’s is weird. I wonder if I can fix it.
Paul does that work? I just get the search, and then a 404 at OneEarth.
Clarification of my previous comment: I didn’t mean to be critical of Wally for sorta kinda recommending a book he hadn’t read—he said he hadn’t read it, and made it fairly clear that he was just guessing it was worth a read because it was about an important subject and basicallly on what he considers the right side. He could even be right—I’m happy for the faith-based to collaborate to save the environment. (Although I’d guess any book with that title was also likely to have some convenient lying in it that would make me puke.)
hmmm… I may have cut and pasted the wrong url. Try this one:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:n3V5f2mp_hEJ:www.onearth.org:8887/node/1511+%22wally+smith%22+onearth+book+stresses&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.com
That still has my query terms embedded in the URL, but for me, at least, it goes right to the cached page.
I asked “Oedipus?” before because he already has the most complete archive of this whole case. Whatever may still be salvaged ought to be, regardless of its apparent relevance. Has anyone already contacted Onearth directly to get the lowdown from their perspective?
I notice his ‘book review’ manages to praise Unscientific America (twice) and complain about WEIT twice, all in the same paragraph. And as Paul W mentions, he hasn’t even managed to read the book in question!
Hoo-boy – that piece is classic Wally.
That from him!
I’ll note now that Rosenau has posted recently, so he’s not still on a weekend getaway ignoring all internetty stuff. No, he’s around, he’s just not bothering to admit that he got everything wrong and repeatedly shouted at me for zero reason. DBAD.
In case there is some misunderstanding, Wally’s beliefs are not relevant to me personally. But as curator of a nine-month-old museum which documents this affair, I am interested in adding pertinent facts to it. One of the overarching puzzles is what motivates Wally. The extent to which he is religious is certainly relevant to that puzzle.
Oh, yes, weekend definitely over, business as usual, not a mention of what went on just before. So, it is important enough to come and make a big fuss over here about, it’s just not important enough to rate a mention on his own blog. What is this reminding me of? Oh, yes: “Gnu Atheists have a negative effect on everything/Gnu Atheists have no effect on anything” coming from the same person, depending on what lends itself to which spin. I interpret dead silence as meaning something has happened on which no “suitable” spin can be put, therefore it can’t have happened. So Rosenau and the others must be right in ignoring it if it didn’t happen, right?
No worries, Wally’s onearth articles have been mirrored by Josh since the summer.
http://mirror.elsewhere.org/webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ahttp%3a%2f%2fwww.onearth.org%2fnode%2f1511
http://mirror.elsewhere.org/webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ahttp%3a%2f%2fwww.onearth.org%2fnode%2f1090
http://mirror.elsewhere.org/webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ahttp%3a%2f%2fwww.onearth.org%2fnode%2f1014
I’m sure Josh is just trying to figure out the best way to “frame” his response. It’s an art, you know. Not everyone can do it.
Josh “I-hate-Jerry-Coyne” Rosenau can’t comment on the matter since, as Jerry hasn’t yet mentioned the topic, there is currently no way for him to criticize his nemesis.
That’s Josh L in 224, Josh R in 225.
Ophelia, update the link in your next post with the first mirror link I gave above.
Like Mr. Mooney, Mr. Roseanau sells himself as a communication expert
http://ncse.com/about/speakers
For example, he is willing to educate scientific audiences on the topic:
“Communicating science to the press and the public”
Do you think his motto is “keep it short and simple”? :-)
That’s what I was hoping to hear and while it is a pleasant surprise, it’s more pleasant than surprise.
Sigmund at #226 may indeed have hit the nail on the head, as that does seem to be Josh R’s modus operandi.
@Sigmund:
+1
Josh R did mention the Templeton article because Jerry did – Josh’s response “move along folks, nothing to see here.”
For 5600 words.