Building bridges
Wally Smith wrote an article on a forthcoming book in October 2009. In fact it’s dated October 26, 2009, which happens to be the date of Chris Mooney’s “My Thanks to ‘Tom Johnson'” post. The opening paragraph of Mooney’s article, given all that we know now, is so richly ironic that one feels dizzy reading it.
Last week, the New Atheist comment machine targeted the following post, in which I republished a preexisting blog comment from a scientist named “Tom Johnson” (a psuedonym). In the comment, Johnson had related how some of his New Atheist-inspired scientist colleagues had behaved toward religious folks at bridge-building conservation events.
You see what I mean, I’m sure. Mooney insults us for being skeptical about a post that smelled like dead fish at the time and is known to be certified, thrice-rotten, hypertoxic dead fish now, a post by a dedicated liar and trash-talker and one-man “comment machine.”
Let’s take a look at the fragrant work of the trash-talking comment-machine writing (for once) under his own name.
He says he hasn’t read the book yet, which is fine, because he’s not reviewing it, he’s discussing the collaboration of the co-authors, a pastor and a scientist (who are also married), and the general collaboration of what he calls “the faith-based community” and science. He’s in favor of the collaboration. He’s against what he sees as obstacles to the collaboration. He spots one in particular…
…engaging the religious seems to be low on the list of scientists’ priorities. Instead, some leading scientists are running (quickly) in the opposite direction, holding contests to come up with the most mocking labels for scientists and others willing to engage the faithful. Blog exchanges on the topic by respected scholars have reached zero consensus and read like they belong more on an elementary school playground than in any serious, forward-looking public forum. As a scientist speaking about his own field, there’s little more to call this than a disgrace – especially so if we ever expect to apply science effectively beyond peer-reviewed journals.
Oh what do you know – it’s all about Jerry Coyne. As it was in the beginning, so it was at the end – it was all about that pesky Jerry Coyne. (If it hadn’t been, I might not have sniffed him out. Think about that, Wally. Your obsessions give you away.) Jerry Coyne, unlike our author, belongs on an elementary school playground…far away from the scatological fantasies Wally engaged in as the YNH bloggers.
His conclusion is stirring:
Hopefully Hayhoe and Farley’s book will be a welcome change of pace in terms of building bridges – not breaking them down – and will help us realize that, if we spend all our time fighting “enemies” in a culture war, all of us are going to lose.
Wally has invested quite a lot of time in fighting his perceived enemies over the past year and a half, but it’s nice to have his advice anyway.
Speaking of Mooney insulting us…he never apologized for that, right? He apologized (sort of, and explicitly not to me) for getting things wrong and in a general way for any harm done, but he never actually apologized for the plain old insults, did he?
It’s sad, because environmentalism (specifically climate change, but environmentalism in general) is one of the few areas where I do think a accomodationist-like approach is justifiable: First, because of the crisis nature of the problem, which dictates extreme tactical expediency (Creationism is not nearly as serious a problem as, say, the institutionalized misogyny of religion; but arguably global warming is a bigger problem, since without any civilization to speak of, institutionalized misogyny will be a non-issue!). Second, because I do not see any philosophical incompatibility between faith and conservationism.
There is an important caveat that when we are exploiting (is that too unkind a word?) theists’ beliefs in order to promote environmentalism, that we also give them solid secular justifications for what we are asking them to do. But I see nothing intellectually dishonest about seeking common ground with religious groups over environmental issues.
Wally Smith might have done some real good, if he weren’t a) a pathological liar, and b) were a little more aware of the epistemic peril of some of his (claimed) approaches (as described in detail in the blog post I linked to above).
I think he meant miltonC, bilbo, petra, william, Tom Johnson, Patricia, Polly-O, whs, yourenothelping, brandon etc
One correction of La Wally’s comment: my contest for a word–that turned out to be “faitheist”–was not for a “mocking term,” but simply a term that described atheists who are soft on religion. Yes, it has acquired mocking overtones, but I wasn’t asking for denigrating terms.
The truth is found through debate. If Xtians want to build bridges it’s because of their distaste for debate (or maybe it’s the truth they have a distaste). Building bridges always means that atheists have to feign respect for beliefs they find nonsensical and noxious, and that ain;t right.
The common ground atheists have with the religious on environmental issues obviously does not include religion. If they want to bring religion into the issue, it’s not a bridge we need, but an exit.
Jeepers, I was just reading Ed Yong’s column: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/03/07/people-don%E2%80%99t-know-when-they%E2%80%99re-lying-to-themselves/
There seems to be a trend: Kaddafi, Charlie Sheen, Mooney. But to give him some benefit of the doubt, he just might believe his own bullshit.
What richly grotesque imagery you conjure up, Sigmund.
I’ve wondered how he managed, or rather stage-managed, it all on a technical level. I mean, did he keep everything in his head or was he sitting at the keyboard surrounded by post-its listing the characteristics of each sock to keep it all as believable as possible? Of course he slipped up in the end, but if we’re honest about how many people actually fell for it before that (yes, conceded, probably those who, at some level, wanted to) it was still quite an investment and the mechanics behind it all are interesting.
That reminds me, weren’t we aiming to make “I agree with Polly-O!” into a meme?
It’s not too late, y’know. I agree with Polly-O!, it should be a meme.
Bridge-building is apparently code for “being a doormat for christians to scrape their feet on.”
Wally should drop the PhD work and write pulp fiction. He’s got an ability to write passable characters, some of the socks were a surprise (to many of us) after all. His narration needs work though. Every time he, or one of his socks, tried to tell a story it came off a bit squinky. But that isn’t a deal breaker in many markets. The Left Behind series sells quite well, I hear.
I agree with
OedipusPolly-O!Ugh, that ‘book [pre-]review’ is chock full of insipidity. There’s plenty in there for me to get grumpy about even without looking at the by-line. He’s a bad writer, but he seems to me to be an even worse scientist, judging by how he describes his professional milieu.
I don’t quite understand the bridge building metaphor. I mean, the main purpose of bridges is to enable people to cross, right? It is true that they also enabe people to stop in the middle, but it gets tiresome to stand in the middle of a bridge all day. So sooner or later, you want to pick a side and go there. But I have a feeling that when people talk of building bridges, it is not to enable mobility, but rather to create a place where everybody can congregate in the middle, blocking traffic and sort of blurring the distinction between the two sides. In short, I am slowly acquring a notion that the bridge building metaphor is overstretched and perhaps counterproductive.
Harald, it does seem a bit tired, as far as metaphors go, although overuse is certainly not the limit of its problems. The generic idea is to discourage compartmentalization and encourage trafficking between two discrete positions, which in some cases is a fine idea. In the specific case of these positions being defined as ‘religion’ and ‘science’, however, there are some (such as myself) who argue that a bridge allowing unrestricted passage to and fro between both realms is a structural impossibility. There are others who seem to believe that anyone holding that view is a hungry carnivorous gnu with a vested interest in preventing the bridge from being built. All the better to chomp the legs off of intrepid waders, you know :)
Ugh, it’s that “bridge building” again. If they live building bridges so much, when are they going to extend one in our direction? Instead of digging a moat between them and the gnasty atheists?
Argh… live = love
@Jen: and even if such a bridge is structurally possible, there’s still the question whether it’s desirable to have it. There’s a clear asymmetry here: Religion may want such a connection, but science has no need for it at all.
Good point about agreeing with Polly-O meme. [makes mental note]
Quite! And frankly I don’t think people really *should* be able to just nip over to Science Island for the day. Understanding things like boat riggings and grappling hooks and pontoons well enough to manage them on treacherous waters takes time and work. People who take bridges to get places are so blissfully unchallenged as to be unappreciative of what it takes to cross on one’s own. And then there’s the problem of them coming over and nicking things to take back as souvenirs. Tut!
I am, however, always happy to provide the narrative for a guided air-tour of the terrain.
That report on Templeton quoted a passage from one TF oration or proposal or statement or whatever, about religion “enriching” science. Riiiiiight.
The point I was just about to make. The benefits from any bridge built between these two accrue only to one side.
I think I misremembered the Templeton item, since I couldn’t find it. I think I meant this part:
That stood out because it’s stronger than the usual guff about compatibility or interaction. Linking the sciences and all religions is……..simply a horrendous suggestion.
(It’s on p 4 of the pdf.)
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP0992115.pdf
I suspect it’s actually a metaphor of the Gravina Island bridge. They’re only talking bridges to garner support for an idea, and to use that support for other hidden goals. There’s no real use for it – it simply sounds progressive.
Meanwhile, the residents of remote Ketchikan want to get off the island easily and see the rest of the world, but still feel that where they’re from is important. Maybe others will come over to stay, if it looks important enough to build such a bridge? But it matters only to Ketchikan…
Anyone dig up what church Wally goes to yet?
What exactly is the “I agree with Polly-O!” meme supposed to convey? Is the idea to post it when we see an accommodationist troll and want to convey strong disagreement with him/her? Do we use it when we want to agree with a Gnu with a little extra dollop of faitheist-ribbing? Is it when we suspect that a particular commenter is a sockpuppet? Or what?
I’m confused. (And probably, more to the point, ignorant.)
For folks like Albert Mohler, I think the bridge-building metaphor refers to Galloping Gertie.
Religion build bridges like an abusive partner tries to make up with flowers and chocolates.
And, gallingly, the benefits don’t actually include using the bridge, in any functional sense. It seems enough for some to point at it and say ‘ahhh, look at that lovely, compatible bridge!’. Some just want a stamp on their passports to verify they crossed it, when in truth they have no interest in actually making the trip. Some do make the trip, gawk at the natives, and return to the safe side with stories about how sordid it all was.
Rieux…Well it’s just a joke, at least for me it is. Self-mockery when agreeing with someone perhaps.
As you say you’re ignorant, perhaps you don’t know that Wally’s little empire was finally doomed when he had “Polly-O” do a comment saying…the immortal words. I think Wally passport-protected YNH almost immediately after that. There was much cruel laughter.
If by accommodationist-like, you mean cooperative, sure. What scientist, naturalist or not, would reject an opportunity for outreach to any group, religious or not. If accommodationist-like means something along the lines of As a scientist, I share your wonder at God’s work, not so sure.
If religious leaders choose to focus on “environmental stewardship,” they do so for their own, often laudable, reasons. The extent to which scientists are “faith-friendly” really doesn’t enter into it, nor do any parties expect it to.
One thing that’s infuriating about accommodationism is the assumption that it makes a difference. I’m not sure it does.
Ophelia:
No, no, I knew that. I was (very tangentially) involved in the whole mess. Though I suppose I had more to say to Mooney and Kazez about Wally than I ever did to Wally and his socks himself.
I just thought there might be more to the specific Polly-O meme than I could gather from this thread. Now I suspect not.
Okay. It seems to me a little weird to say “I agree with Polly-O!” when I actually agree with, say, Ophelia—but no one has actually appointed me Dispositive Evaluator of Snarky Internet Memes. More’s the pity!
I think maybe the IAWPO meme is best deployed as snark in circumstances where someone is clearly reaching for false consensus to brow beat an opponent with perceived debating points. It would most obviously apply with sock-puppeteering, but it could also apply when someone drags another participant into the discussion by agreeing with their comment, whether it be pertinent or tangential.
Or perhaps it should be a little less literal. Like OB implies, maybe it should be applied when an accommodationist’s (or any interlocutor’s) house of cards begins to topple in any circumstance? I’m not so sure, actually. What would be the ideal circumstances to deploy this type of snark? Thoughts?
I agree with Polly-O!
Off track. As fascinating as as the wally saga is, Ophelia, it is International Women’s Day today and there is this amazing video of Iranian women protesting against the hijab on IWD 1979.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxGYLk92edY&feature=player_embedded
At 1:32 min , two women in chadors are interviewed. They are outraged at the injustice dealt out to women and declare forthrightly and firmly that they will leave their religion if it persists in marginalising them and their daughters. I found that remarkable because that is something no muslim feminist would dare to say in 2011, even if she was sitting in the middle of another ‘revolutionary’ square in the middle east. That,to me is the difference between a feminist and a hyphen-feminist. It was sad to realise the ground that has been lost in 30 years.
* It also struck me that if a present day news broadcaster, say the BBC, were to encounter two such strong women’s opinions, it would have not had the guts to broadcast the part about them thrteatening to leave the religion for fear of the outrage it would provoke and for reasons of ‘religious sensitivity’.
Don’t trolls live under bridges?
There is no permanent bridge. It’s a swing bridge, like wot we brits have on some of our canals. All the controls are on their side.
I think Hamilton’s got the hang of it, though I suspect we will end up varying it more, as in “I agree with Polly-O!, but…”
What guarantee is there that Wally does not strike again in some new disguise?
I hope that critical anonymous newcomers to B&W will not in the future be welcomed by default comments like “Is that you, Wally?”
No, Stewart, I must firmly disagree with you here. As revealed by Rieux’s incisive analysis, the great strength of “I agree with Polly-O!” is that its meanings are essentially limitless. On its own it also has a stark beauty that is horribly marred and disfigured when cluttered with extraneous addenda. We should therefore stand tall and allow the poetry of its unadorned simplicity to reverberate through the coming ages:
I agree with Polly-O!
Where memes are concerned, I must clearly defer to the superior instincts of the coiner (or should I say “Coyner”) of Gnu Atheism.
I agree with Polly-O!
Stewart asked:
I suspect he just asked himself – “What would TB say?” I mean, its not as if there was that much variation between the postings of many of the rather homogenous sock-personalities and that of some of the regular accomodationists. If you were to judge who was a sock just on the basis of accusations of lying, goalpost shifting, flinging insults, rabid paranoia about posts by Ophelia and Jerry Coyne etc there would be a few more candidates who are still very much active on the usual suspect blogs. I don’t think they ARE socks but there’s not too much difference when you look at content.
By the way, I agree with Polly-O!
I’m not liking the second attempt at plugging their book while bashing gnu atheists based on anonymous emails from Aikin and Talisse: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/03/take-two-accommodationism-and-atheism.html#comments
Their criticism of PZ, for example, for using the otherwise easily understood phrase “irrational reasons” as incoherent and their subsequent correction smacks to me of unnecessary pomposity.
@ Sigmund # 40:
Ah, but it’s more than just character (I mean, he obviously wasn’t too great at that, because I knew immediately they had to be socks the first time I ever looked at YNH). But they had personal stories, too. Wally didn’t just have to wonder what Milton C. would say, he also had to keep in mind, just for one example, that he’d given Milton C. a wife who’d been sexually abused (that was to delegitimise anything Ophelia might have to say about misogyny). And that would mean he’d have to avoid anything that accidentally made Milton C. look like he wasn’t married. That’s just the beginning of the ramifications of one tiny detail.
I think an additional reason, other than the power of a chorus of agreement, that Wally had so many socks, was to be able to add to the number of first-hand voices. Anyone can say they know something from second-hand anecdotal evidence (you name it, take the most absurd propositions you can think of, probably everyone on this thread could provide second-hand anecdotal evidence for all or any of them). Chris Mooney had second-hand anecdotal evidence for the disgusting way we behave at conservation events (he got it from Tom Johnson, remember?) which was why his elevating the comment to post status got all the flak about how true it might be. Go back and look at the thread which first gave birth to the “conservation event” anecdote (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/10/15/more-on-dawkins/) and you’ll find it’s not full of people doubting it. What I’m getting at is, when you tell something as your first-hand experience, it is one hell of a lot stronger than when it’s a generation removed. Probably, in part, because it’s much easier to say to someone relaying something they heard that it doesn’t sound plausible than it is to tell someone who claims to have been there that they’re either lying or hallucinating. Anyway, it strikes me that Wally must have seen the benefit in having lots of socks with different personal experiences, all of which converged to make the point he was pushing.
I think the comment meme is beginning to catch on!
http://blog.al.com/keeping-alabama-forever-wild/2011/03/theres_a_different_kind_of_wil_1.html
I’d like to add one, too, but it’s not letting me.
‘Tom’ told me that you have to sign in to your google, twitter or facebook account on that page and then give an alabama zipcode when it asks for details.
I signed in to the site, but I never seem to be logged in on that page and it’s not showing me a place to do so there. I was going to do it as Milton C. and you’ll never guess what I wanted to say in my comment.
I’m thinking that “I agree with Polly-O!” should be the closing line to a comment where you are forcefully making a point, perhaps a controversial point, perhaps an unpopular point in the present company, and you want to reaffirm agreement with yourself. For instance, at Butterflies and Wheels I might write:
Do we really want to push a meme that is clearly pure ridicule, with no substantive point to be made whatsoever, and coin it in relation to a controversy in which we were being accused of engaging in pure ridicule with no substantive points? Won’t that just be playing into the hands of the tone police? I know it’s an unpopular notion around here to talk about what one ought and ought not to say, but perhaps we do need to be more respectful of sockpuppets. After all, maybe our lack of socking looks as ridiculous to Wally as his socking looks to us. Maybe he likes being a sockpuppet. It is time for us to build a bridge between those who use internet anonymity legitimately, and those who engage in sockpuppetry. Instead of divisive language and hurtful “memes”, we should be seeking common ground with the sockpuppets.
I agree with Polly-O!
That doesn’t sound at all bad. What will require our vigilance, because the phrase is so associated with sock-puppetry, is to avoid the use of it coming across as an accusation of sock-puppetry when no such thing is intended.
I suspect most people will have no clue as to its origins. Who really remembers all the Wally Smith sock puppets names after all? Polly-O wasn’t even one of the most prolific examples.
We could have an annual quiz to find out.
If anyone is familiar with the game ‘Mornington Crescent’ then they might recognize the use of the meme as a sort of Sierpiński variation to the standard rules.
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/03/take-two-accommodationism-and-atheism.html#comments
Rieux, yes, I guess the difficulties you mention are one reason we all forgot about the meme…Its use wasn’t obvious so it didn’t get used.
mirax – thanks for the reminder and the link.
I think people are doing fine work on the Polly-O problem. In fact I agree with Polly-O!
The power of personal testimony – one of the most striking ones was Wally as one of the YNH “scientists,” a woman. (Who knew any of them were women before that moment? Certainly not I.) She was an entry in the “I’m an atheist embarrassed by other atheists” category. (You want to watch that, Wally. That was the tipoff on that thread at Rob Knop’s, you know.) She told a touching story. She had proudly raised her young son to be a proud atheist…but then he came home from school one day to report that he’d called his little theist classmates idiots. Omigod!!!!!!!! The scales fell from her eyes, and she Repented.
Yeah right. That story just screamed FAKE.
Does anybody have the link to Josh’s archive of YNH handy? I can’t seem to find it, even with Google.
Complete archive of YNH at
http://docs.google.com/uc?id=0B5EzXtAm6DHnNjdlZTYzYmQtNDE5YS00NGM2LThmN2ItNDg4NzE1NTU5ZGU5
My list of Wally Smith sockpuppets is:
Anna K.
Bilbo
Brandon
Hammill
MiltonC
Patricia
Petra
Philip Jr.
Polly-O
Seminatrix
Tom Johnson
Vyspyr
William
Does anyone know any more?
Uh-oh—now I feel like I’ve dumped ice water all over people who were having fun. D’oh!
Sorry. I don’t actually object to “IAWPO” at all. I like silly ‘net memes; it’s not even a huge problem if they confuse me. Just, um, yeah. “IAWPO” would probably be better if it were clearer what it meant, but that’s just a minor point lobbed in from the sidelines, and I really don’t want to discourage anyone from trying to get this meme off the ground.
hyperdeath @55, I think Oedipus, on his extremely long comment thread, identified “whs” as another name Wally used when commenting. Not a very good name for a sock, obviously.
That’s not how I understood it, Rieux! You were just asking. Notice no one was discouraged. :- )
So I don’t think this story is quite as implausible as you might think. My wife occasionally watches those shows like Wife Swap where they have people switch families for a week. In one, a very crunchy atheistic family switched moms with a very conservative, very religious military family.
The teenage son in the cool family unfortunately somewhat fit the caricature of Gnu Atheists advocated by people like Mooney or “Tom Johnson”. He ended up coming off looking like a real douche, making the mom from the other family cry, and — this is the part that bothered me the most, actually — based on a pretty specious argument to boot. It’s not that he was speaking plainly and it just came off as harsh because this woman was so attached to her false beliefs; he really was just basically calling her stupid repeatedly.
This doesn’t exactly change my mind about the whole gnu/accomodationism debate because, you know, the kid was like sixteen and obviously pretty angst-y. And anyway, we don’t know to what extent they edited it to make him look worse (though notably, the editing also made the woman who cried seem pretty pathetic, so it seems either they were editing it to make both sides look bad, or else they just couldn’t really subtract the basic truth of the situation through editing: that this egotistical kid was being a douchebag, but that the mom’s beliefs were so epistemologically hollow that they couldn’t even withstand a little tongue-lashing from an overconfident angst-ridden teenager).
I only bring this up because I don’t think it’s entirely implausible for a young person to go off half-cocked and basically fulfill the caricature. I’m sure most young people raised in skeptical households know better — but amidst the rage of hormones, combined with the demonstrable truth that your theistic classmates kind of are being idiots, at least in regards to that aspect of their beliefs… I’m sure many an atheist teenager has pulled shit like this.
(Of course we now know the story was fabricated, but it’s not at all implausible. That’s all.)
hyperdeath,
I thought I remembered someone doing the listing work back then, just took me a few minutes to find it.
http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/uploaded/825/ynhnamelist.html
I think yours is more complete because it includes Tom Johnson, because that hadn’t yet come out, and Hammill, who hadn’t yet been born. Is Anna K. a definite? To this day, I’m still finding it hard to believe that Julie wasn’t one.
James – “her” kid was 5 or 6. A small child. Then there was the “mother’s” astonishment and abrupt enlightenment. It was totally implausible, trust me. It was a Wally-story. Wally is not skilled at those stories. He is skilled at pretending to be a sober thoughtful adult of a certain kind (early Hammill), but not at these dramatic stories.
I wish I could look it up.
I used to watch that show sometimes myself, for the sociological (as it were) fascination. I may even have seen that one – it sounds faintly familiar.
There’s also this comment from Pharyngula, which deals with puppets and suspected puppets, but more in reference to the Intersocktion. It’s still Wally we’re talking about, so good to have it around for reference. Note that the commenter provides an address from which one can request the info in a different format. I think some of the formatting has gotten lost in this paste, so here’s the link to the original post: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/holy_crap_we_were_all_played.php
Here you go, Ophelia: http://mirror.elsewhere.org/yourenothelping.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/brainwashing-for-atheism/
Ah, thank you Stewart!
Reading…
He’s so irritating. That ridiculous “we” – it always drove me crazy, even before I started smelling a rat. Who does that?
Okay, James – read it for yourself.
Please.
Ophelia, read all the comments afterwards. Amazing. Are you having glitches? I’ve had little success in posting in the last hour.
Or does your software block certain links or types of links? Have been trying to post (for hyperdeath) a list of socks and suspects made on the Pharyngula post entitled “Holy crap, we were all played!” Not including link this time, in case that’s what stopped it from appearing. Fifth attempt.
I think most of the comments on that post are socks. I don’t think the list above is complete – I think Wally used plenty of single-post socks.
Stewart, ha, snap, I just did (read the comments).
Ah, links are probably getting caught. I’ll let them out.
There it is. Sorry about delay and frustrating attempts!
My experience of building bridges with Christians and other ‘faith’ people means “surrender.” That is, I have to accept the truth of their fairy-story, regardless of the fact that it’s obviously made-up crap.
Look at the Abrahamic religions, Judaism is nothing more than a kludge of religions that has evolved, over-time, significantly from its past. To the point that you’d never realize that it is descended from a polytheistic, child-sacrificing religion.
You’d never know that Christianity has far less to do with Judaism than it does from the other active, contemporary competing-pagan-religions from which it stole huge swaths of its gospels and back-story. You’d never realize that Paul of Tarsus seems to be the L. Ron Hubbard of his day and, pretty much, made up a whole new religion based on a hallucination.
And don’t even get me started on the delusional, whack-nut, pedophile that was Mohammad…
Yet, should I wish to ‘discuss’ religion with them, I’m the one who has to prove something? I have to accept their made up god? I have to accept their religious doctrine and truth claims? I have to be ‘polite’ and ‘civil’ to a group of people of which nearly half of which think I’m, by default, immoral? All because I don’t believe their fairy stories and I point out that I’m a crap load more moral than their ‘righteous’ god…
Fuck that.
Do we know that Julie wasn’t a sock? I think she was!
Thanks. Apologies to all for the retroactive repetition. My first attempt was #62 and it seems Ophelia has been good enough to leave the now-redundant intervening three attempts out of the thread. Is there anything I have to watch out for in future, or is it business as usual again?
Re: Julie – Glendon Mellow on the Oedipus thread says: “And I’m shocked that Julie (who gave me the “mindslut” comment) isn’t YNH.” She never appears on the lists. I think it needs clarifying further, or again.
@MosesZD #72:
Reading your comment made me wish they’d all just fight each other before fighting us, but you have no doubt noticed how quickly solidarity appears among the murderous rivals when they are confronted by people who say they’re all wrong. There was an example of this that was quite striking I heard a while back. I think it was Ann Coulter on Dennis Prager’s show saying just about that.
Moses is correct. A culture war is a culture war. We’re not friends with our enemies, why on earth would we seek to build bridges or pretend we have some kind of fellowship with them? Realising religion is our intellectual enemy is what defines gnus, gives us our defining moment. There is no gnu scriptures that says ‘love thy enemies’.
Follow Sigmund to 3QD, 9:53 AM. Flawless implementation.
Business as usual. Links sometimes get caught in spam thing along with all the link-heavy spam.
Julie – yes well she’s probably a sock then. It’s not as if we can trust Walter to have given us a complete list.
Bridges. Quite.
Hyperdeath,
I don’t think Anna K. belongs on your list—or if she does, Wally was doing a better-than-usual job of maintaining that persona and concealing her/his identity IP-wise. That would be interesting.
I think Bad Monkey (over at Greg Laden’s Blog) was Wally, and Greg was drawing him out and checking IPs while toying with him in this thread, where Greg kept dropping hints while Bad Monkey blustered and dared him to prove he was a YNH blogger:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2010/06/youre_not_helping_blog_admits.php
Hilarious. “As someone coming from a different life perspective than Polly-O, I still strongly agree with everything Polly-O has ever written about this topic, and if you don’t like it, you can f**k off! … Oops, did I sign in under the name Polly-O? Well in that case, I agree with myself. Completely. Yeah. … Is there a way to delete that comment?”
They have 38,000 different sects in Christianity alone. And, when they can, they kill each other over their differences. And they’ll even kill each other off in first-world countries if the tensions get high enough. And, as you point out, they’ll unite to squash us in a red hot minute, like if we demand they leave us alone. Or they respect the Theory of Evolution. Or we wish to teach their children a scientific truth that might conflict with their primitive belief system.
It just amazes me that anyone in their right mind thinks we, the despised, marginalized and discriminated minority, should build the bridge…
Yeah, I’d wager Wally used a lot of “single-post socks,” as Ophelia says. Unless he kept some kind of Excel spreadsheet to keep track of his many mendacities, he probably doesn’t even know himself. It’s like someone who has 100 cats—how do they remember all those names?
Hey Ophelia, thanks for looking that up. I still say that — had it not been shown to be false already — I wouldn’t have found that completely implausible. Well, the part about the kid saying “Mommy says religious people are stupid,” I wouldn’t find implausible.
Of course, even if it had been true, the take-home wouldn’t have been to stop being so outspokenly critical of religion, but rather to a) be careful about the language you use around your kids, and b) make sure to talk to them about what you actually think about this stuff rather than having them infer it from what they hear you saying. So I guess that part of the story is implausible: the nature of the mom’s epiphany.
And I guess that’s just what Wally was all about, eh? He imagines how an outspoken atheist would feel if that happened to him — and he gets it right, I think, as far as how it would be a rather mortifying thing to hear. But then he imagines the parent thinking, “I’d better start kissing up to people’s false beliefs!” when most real people would think, “I’d better talk to my kid about this, and make sure in the future that what I say in front of him is what I actually think rather than what I might feel in a moment of exasperation.”
Yes, I would be rather amazed if anyone was able to demonstrate that Bad Monkey was not actually Wally Smith. Quite possibly, Wally only tried to keep track of his major players and just pulled a name out the air (or somewhere) if he needed a one-off for some task that he didn’t feel should involve any of his stars.
On the mother-impersonation, Mama-Wally’s real giveaway, for my money, was
The pride bit, that says to me in clear unequivocal language “I am a fervently believing Christian trying to imagine an atheist mother whose child has swallowed my ‘gospel’ and will stand up to any peer pressure to witness for Darwin.”
Oh, and thanks, Sigmund. I had somehow arrived at this age without being exposed to “Mornington Crescent” and consider myself vastly more erudite thanks to your comment. Beautifully silly.
IAWPO!
I think the only way I can repay Sigmund for his contribution to my education is by informing him of the existence of the International Association of Women Police Officers. I don’t know how many members are atheists, but they may accidentally start learning a bit about the issues concerning us soon.
I had in mind that the template for the meme would be based upon its original usage,
It’s a variation of the “switcharoo” joke often used by Triumph from Conan O’Brian’s old show — “Oh that’s a wonderful idea … for me to poop on!” Example:
It is a reductio ad absurdum argument but with a twist — the writer agrees with the absurdum part, using it to demonstrate his or her presumed superior reasoning abilities.
I’ve updated the Pharyngula Wiki You’re Not Helping page with an extended list:
http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/You%27re_Not_Helping
To clarify one point, is Tom Johnson a real person whose identity was hijacked, or was it always a pseudonym?
I never heard of Tom Johnson being anything other than the pseudonym Wally used for his “conservation event” lie at the Intersocktion. There may have been speculation at the time about identity theft, but I’m not aware of anything more concrete than that.
Thanks for the link.
Well James, I might not have found it completely implausible under different circumstances, either – but then one doesn’t. But I certainly would have found it clunky and tinny. Maybe under other circs I would have just thought “clumsy writer” and nothing else. But under these circs – the clumsy tinny writing together with the content together with all the rest of what was wrong with YNH made this particular post stand out for sheer conspicuous fakey fakeness.
As Stewart says, that “I was so proud” bit in particular. Those three exlamation points…groan.
Wally over-eggs the pudding when he gets excited. Maybe he always took a valium before writing a Hammill post.
hyperdeath, that link gives Vyspyr as a “possible” sock, but at least in my view the case for Vyspyr is pretty solid. See http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2010/clean-up-your-mess/#comment-56536
It wouldn’t make sense for Wally to hijack the identity of a real scientist named “Tom Johnson”. Claiming the name was real would have led to exposure: either there are zero biologists named Tom Johnson working at a university in the South, or there are a handful which may be checked individually. There is no evidence for such hijacking, “Tom Johnson” himself said that he was pseudonymous, Mooney said he was pseudonymous, and it would be a ridiculous mistake if he weren’t pseudonymous.
The wiki history shows Tom Johnson originally listed as “Hijacked identity of real person”, which was recently changed to “Possibly hijacked identity of real person”. Please remove the line about hijacking altogether.
I agree with Polly-O! I mean, er, I agree with Ophelia re: the fakey-fakeness of The Tale of the Chastened Atheist Mother.
Truly, I’ve never heard living five year olds actually talk like that–“mommy says people who believe in God are stupid”, e.g. It just rings hollow because not only would most five year olds not put things *that way* to their peers, it would be very unlikely that they would recount a tidbit of a conversation *that way* back to a parent. It sounds like something a fakey-fake five year old in a Frank Capra movie might say: (“Teacher says: every time a bell rings, and angel gets his wings!”)
Parents–atheist or otherwise–have to be careful about every damn thing they say, because normal kids do leave the house and talk to other people about things that are said and done within it. The idea that a kid of a godless mom might blunder through the process of discussing religion with his or her believer friends (or their parents), and that such encounters might cause the godless mom to clarify her position and/or give the child some additional guidelines for future discussions is not at all out of bounds (oh yes, I have personal anecdotes aplenty!). However, both the way in which Wally’s character related the story and the ersatz moral at the end of it bear little resemblance to most real life scenarios.
In fact, it sounds much like the also-implausible story of the little kid who said “Why does all this matter anyway?” at the famous Event. I believe Cathy Newman, who was there, was withering about that little fairy tale.
Kids Say the Darndest Things, but Not Those Things.
bingo! I think Wally doesn’t talk (or listen) to real kids much. He just imagines what such dialogue might be like.
Stewart,
The names on my list (the one you linked to earlier) did not include Tom Johnson because it was a list of the names of YNH commenters, and TJ was always conspicuously absent from YNH. I created another page about Wally’s socks on the Intersection, though:
http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/uploaded/825/YNHonInter.html
Very useful, Dave. May I say thanks on behalf of all?
Oedipus, I see that you are still trying to make Polly-O do your bidding.
Try not! — for Polly-O is slave to no man. Constrain her as you wish, she will always burst your shackles and run free, dancing naked in the moonlight. She will take a thousand lovers or none, as the mood strikes her; but in the end, only Polly-O shall know the eternal mystery that is Polly-O.
I agree with Polly-O!
Polly-O! used to eat Gnu Atheists for breakfast, but Hamilton Jacobi was the only one who agreed with her.
Nay, Stewart — Polly-O is ineffable and transcendent. We mortals cannot say what she eats for breakfast; we can only say what she does not eat for breakfast.
I agree with Polly-O!
Because if I didn’t, she would edit my comments.
Polly-O! want a cracker?
Low-hanging fruit, Stewart. Low-hanging fruit.
Ineffable she is, but Polly-O is also wrathful when mocked. It’s not nice to fool Polly-O.
Well, I wasn’t thinking of just any cracker…
Polly-O is not the answer. She is the question.
I agree with hyperdeath.
We need a Polly-O song.
Dave W.
I pretty much assume that Vindrisi was one of Wally Smith’s socks.
(If there’s somebody else out there sociopathic and obsessive enough to dog me the way Vindrisi did, I want to know who that person is.)