…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation
Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation
Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.
IF by “troll fetish” you mean I take an unnatural interest in trolls, Guilty as charged.
Oh, man, I’ve gotta put “superficial” in there too?!?
Crimity, my closing will be endless!
There’s a lesson here for all of us about how one person’s self-righteous indignation can be another person’s sputtering, incoherent rage.
I was also thinking, earlier, about how one of the deepest communicative divides between “liberals” and “conservatives” (using those terms loosely and broadly) is that what each side views as its distinctive epistemic virtues are typically seen by the other side as epistemic vices.
Where a liberal might congratulate herself for being open-minded, tolerant, and undogmatic, a conservative sees her as wishy-washy, eclectic, lacking a moral compass or coherent world-view. By contrast, a conservative might congratulate herself for being steadfast in conviction, with a firm moral compass for distinguishing right and wrong, and proud of her traditions, a liberal would see her as opinionated, ethnocentric, judgmental, and insufficiently empathetic to the suffering of marginalized groups.
And, insofar as we tend (perhaps rightly, though I’m not sure) to associate epistemic virtues and vices with ethical virtues and vices, we have the following result: liberals and conservatives see each other as not just basically wrong but also as basically bad.
I do try to appreciate the epistemic and ethical virtues of conservatives, but the dominant voices in the Republican Party in the United States circa 2000-present do not make it easy.
The resident ‘philosophists’ of TSZ regularly ‘rage’ against anyone who points out their empty talk. That’s not a surprise. They apparently knew each other before TSZ; one invited the other. What surprises me is how easily KN speaks in water, but not in blood. More than merely ‘natural’ doesn’t seem to register on their self-confessed ‘horizontal’ shallow intellects. The duo – walto & KN (secular hug!) – are both far too USAmerico-centric (e.g. polemic 2-party system) for my tastes. Get outside of the USA & discover a world that rejects you and your comfortable, PRIDE atheism. Sit down & pout or raise awareness.
{Note to self: add ‘shallow, horizontal, USAmerico-centric, and empty’ to list of grievous faults for letter closings.}
O Lord, why did you make me so bad, bad, bad? I’ll get carpal tunnel just wishing somebody a happy birthday. 🙁
KN, you are charitable to a fault!
Those perhaps a bit less so might enjoy this, a blog of a friend:
Really? I didn’t discover this site from some blog posts by Neil? Hunh.
I know you care nothing about the truth, Gregory, but it still surprises me that you’d post stuff that’s so obviously false that it might cast doubts on your value judgments as well. But what the hell do I know, I’m sure you know best, being the deep, Abrahamic, nonUSA, vertical, non-philosophist, etc., etc. that you are.
Anyhow gotta go back to…what is it you say I do here in Farmington?….oh yeah, insurance sales. Catchya!
I’m curious. What is the approximate ratio of truth to utter bullshit in the typical Gregory post? I’ve got it at .0003, but maybe someone else here has a more accurate figure.
That’s pretty impressive walto. Most people have a very coarse grained BS detector.
For example, here’s how mine works:
Anything by keiths is BS.
Anything by William is not BS
I’d like to calibrate this thing, but I fear TSZ is not the place for it. 😉
I guess I could go back to UD for an extended spell.
Mung,
It’s obviously broken beyond repair, Mung. Just junk it.
Why should he care about saying stuff that’s factually false, when he’s seen right through our facade, being the — as you say — deep, Abrahamic theist, non-USA, vertically transcendent, anti-philosophist that he so obviously is?
I tell ya, Gregory’s unerring ability to discern the depths of my soul — err, sorry, my soul is utterly devoid of depth — I meant, the shallows of my soul is clearly evidence of his Superior Discernment. He knows me so much better than I know myself that it’s only my own fear and cowardice that prevents me from asking him for dating advice.
KN: He knows me so much better than I know myself…
If you’re a philosopher, that should really sting. 😉
Gods forbid.
Somewhere, Walker Percy remarked on how odd it is that a stranger can meet you, size you up in 30 seconds, and know you better than you will ever know yourself. I don’t think Walker Percy had run into Gregory.
Given William’s current views on some of his previous views, I think you’ve painted yourself into a corner there, Mung.
Steve:
It’s from Lost in the Cosmos (I’m a Walker Percy fan):
Mine would probably be better if I could tell more people (or their names) apart. E.g., I was recently humiliated by the fact that while Gregory knows so many facts about me (most of them wrong, but still…), I had no idea he was in the social sciences or was deep, awesome, etc.
I tried to send my BS detector back while it was still under warranty, but they said it was fine. You know, it was MY fault, not the detector’s. I was thinking of filing an action in small claims court, but a couple of people told me I’d lose, so I was like, Oh, fuck it.
The point is, I still use it, but it’s sometimes directed at the wrong person.
On another thread, someone called Gregory a “fucktard.” I just wanted to indicate here how strongly I concur with that sentiment. As I’ve mentioned above, the guy is both extremely unpleasant, and dumb as a stick to boot. Bad combination IMHO. Like a perfect storm of fucktardedness.
Yours, the pathetic, empty, philosophistical, etc., etc., etc.,
Walto (Check out our Inland Marine Special Introductory Rates!!)
Farmington, Mizz.
walto, you’re as little as your dirtyfaced language displays. I’ve never used such language about atheist ideology or atheists here. It is simply sad that you think you are ‘cool’ to talk such trash. It sounds like you’re on a bender, willing to say the silliest and most absurd things, even to be a PROUD atheist philosophist as if that were a compliment. I hope you eventually feel better. Bottom of the barrel. I guess the positive is: nowhere to go but up (unless you try to dig through the bottom).
Any more TedExs in the pipleline, Gregory?
Haha. ‘Dirtyfaced’. Heaven forfend!!
Richardthughes,
Make it known when you do such an invited public recorded presentation and I’ll be sure to send comments if hearing about it. (Obviously you’re obsessed with that video!)
Right now, you’re nobody masquerading as a bad-mouthed skeptic-atheist on an anti-IDism site. Now with walto’s rude, mean, flopping bender there needs to be a bottom 5 at TSZ and Richardthughes, you are quite obviously in it. No elevation, hating the light, mocking people, not telling truth. Same good wishes for you as for walto to eventually go up.
The one at the very bottom seems to be a theist.
I say “seems” because I haven’t ruled out the possibility that he is one of the pod people.
I’m having second thoughts about asking you for a reference, Gregory.
Given your penchant for trying to out / dox people, Gregory, I’ll refrain from blowing my own horn or linking to me talking. But don’t let my inability or unwillingness to create batshit-stupid-yet-hilarious ‘educational’ content stop you from banging out a sequel!
Neil Rickert,
Don’t worry, Neil, you don’t count as one of the bottom 5. Not enough oomph in you.
Kantian Naturalist,
If you demonstrated more depth than your ‘horizontal’ atheist love of self, perhaps a decent conversation could eventually happen. But you’re still stuck promoting superficial ideologies, pretending they are profound and important to atheists. That’s your philosophistry showing its emptiness, KN. Relishing disenchantment and despair is not considered a virtue, for most people.
Look, if you want to promote Jewish atheism then at least do it more directly. Stop fussing around and be specific with the core of your ideology/worldview. Calling yourself a socialist, Marxist, environmentalist, LGBTQ pluralist, empiricist, vulgar naturalist & thinking ‘radical leftists’ like Syriza offer a coherent critique of capitalism is absurd. You make philosophy look bad, sick and weakly (as you’ve often confessed weakness of philosophy compared with physical science) when you speak claiming to represent that field.
There are much better role models than the cluster of minor ‘thinkers’ you have chosen to follow, commit your life time and study to. That you seem to think people will embrace your ‘horizontal’ thinking is really too sad and depressing to share with actual scholars. Better let you wallow amongst eclectic ‘radical’ friends far out of the mainstream. Maybe one day you’ll wake up and discover that the disenchantment you suffer from was your own prison, just like Weber portended. The key is there, but the will & soul is still absent.
Please post the bottom 5 list, Gregory.
KeithS, whoever comes lower in the list is buying the beers!
Yeah, right! 😉 Just bottom-dwelling anti-theism talk is probably the most that can be expected from you here. walto & KN are obviously both more competent as they at least linked to their disenchanting horizontal work.
As for Richardthughes, his record here indicates urine bottle washing at best.
oh no Gregory, you’re going to goad me into telling you what I do for a living!
Oh wait, I just remembered you’re a vainglorious dipshit crank and I’m not that bothered about you except for your unintentional comedy output.
We should work shifts keeping Gregory busy here in Noyau so he won’t shit all over the topic threads.
Kind of like tag-team wrestling, but less ‘elevated’.
FWIW, I think my work is at least diagonal.
Lordy, lordy, what have y’all been up to while I wasn’t looking.
Gregory, aren’t you worried that you’re being a terrible examplar of “elevation” when you foul this place with your stream of slurs and insults?
Aren’t you worried someone from your real life will track you here and find your foul-mouthed obsessive ranting just completely unprofessional?
Aren’t you worried that you will never be able to face yourself in a mirror without flinching at the memories of what a horrible persona you have indulged yourself in?
You definitely need to raise your consciousness. Maybe you need to exile yourself from TSZ to do so. Something about your hanging out here is making you repulsive, and whatever it is, it’s not good for you.
Darlin’ I’m worried for you. Please do go away and heal yourself since we can’t do it for you.
I got the idea from some Steve Martin movie (can’t remember the name, but I think “California” is in it) of maybe putting a recycling receptacle right under my mail slot. After all, about 98% of all the “mail” I receive is spam.
I think this would be a good lesson for what to do with Gregory at this site. Just set up his registration so that all of his posts automatically go to guano. It would save a ton of time, and the rest of the site would be both more educational and more pleasant to read. I mean I get that he thinks pretty much everybody here is a shallow, proud, evil, atheist (and the worst ones of us are USAmerican philosophists). But does every thread have to have a special space set aside for that?
Alternatively, since the guy only knows a couple dozen words, you could set up some kind of posting by random arrangement of those on every thread. That would save HIM time by getting the shitting up of each thread out of the way automatically.
I don’t know. Just two suggestions for possible improvements. Take ’em or leave ’em.
Yeah, Eliza….Wait, what?
He has failed to explain why that would be a problem, if true.
petrushka,
Something about being horizontal, I think.
petrushka,
It’s not a problem, but simply a fact not yet recognised by Lizzie. The vast majority of TSZ’s commenters are atheists.
There are only two USAmerican philosophists here, KN and walto, who are both employed as ‘philosophy’ professors in USA (which they’ve told us, otherwise guano for telling the truth) and who are both atheists, one a Jewish atheist.
TSZ is mainly a den for atheists. Does anyone disagree? No, didn’t think so.
The theists here, few and far between, are mainly IDists who try to ‘game’ TSZers with either their IDism (Mung), apologetics (Mung, stcordova & Robert Byers) or YECism (Robert Byers & stcordova). The fixation with WJM will end now that it is admitted he is not actually defending IDism, but rather ‘intentional design’, which of course he also cannot prove ‘scientifically.’ And Steve Schaffner is an atheist’s patsy.
Erik is doing rather well kicking KN in the façade that he thinks is ‘intelligent’, though I don’t know his worldview base. He is apparently not an atheist.
Am I missing anyone?
I have never called a soul at TSZ ‘evil’, though many here demonstrate on a regular basis that they are far from ‘good.’
The problem is that TSZ is made up of marginal people in their real lives (based on what they’ve said here), not just outside the mainstream, not just pushed out of or volunteered out of churches & synagogues (for their arrogant or contrarian unbelief), but it is made up of actual religion haters. Unnatural (anti-religious) people. These are the ‘bottom’ layer of society because of their anger, egoism and self-righteous exclusion. That is a significant social fact.
Gregory, you seem terribly angry about something, but it’s not at all clear to me what.
What is “the problem” that you are trying to explain, or solve?
What would the world be like if it was the way you would like it to be?
I’m sure there are lots of things Lizzie hasn’t mentioned or acknowledged. Why is this one important?
I believe that’s false, incidentally. (Surprise! Surprise!) I’m too lazy to look it up myself, but I believe I added that word to my letter closings, because it was in one of Gregory’s posts. Most of Gregory’s posts contain at least one false statement, so I doubt anybody will find this alarming.
Let me expand on that. I don’t give a damn about what you believe. I don’t care whether you are male or female, gay or straight, black or white. I don’t care whether you are really named Gregory or whether you are really a teacher. I simply don’t care about your personal life.
I read one post at a time and decide whether or not to respond to that post.
Some posters have such a distinct online style that I take that into consideration. If I think someone is more often than not wrong or misguided, I will be biased. I can’t help that. But I still respond to posts and not to posting history.
In case anybody is wondering, this is an example of Gregory doing his “work.” God bless him, and his employer. It’s a dynamite job, and I doubt anybody else is more fitted for it.
And if you think that was impressive, you should see the guy handle pegs and holes!
Elizabeth,
Elizabeth, read this loud and clear: no anger, just calm, ‘neutral’ observation. That’s a reality of TSZ.
Very few theists come here. That’s simply a fact.
Your ‘mission’ about “a place where people could discuss controversial positions about life…without rancour” is biased towards atheism.
Just doing his job, Elizabeth. Can’t blame a man for that.
There’s one little problem with Gregory’s narrative: I don’t hate religion. I’m not religious myself, but that’s not motivated by a hatred of religion per se. I really don’t hate very much, though there’s a huge amount of injustice, oppression, and cruelty in the world that makes me alternatively angry and sad to think about. Some of that injustice, oppression, and cruelty is due to some religious institutions and practices, and most of it is not. And there are many cases in which religious practices play an important role in enabling people to resist injustice and oppression.
I just learned (about an hour ago) of one really fascinating way that religion enables resistance to injustice: because of the separation of church and state in the US, corrections officers in state and federal prisons cannot interfere with religious communities inside prisons. Religious communities therefore function within the prison society as refuges from constant surveillance that otherwise characterizes prison life. (There’s an argument that needs to be cashed out here as to why constant surveillance, without real privacy, is oppressive.)
Anyway, religious institutions have done a great deal of good — here one can think, just within the 20th century, of the expansion of the welfare state and the civil rights movement. Over the years I’ve enjoyed working with religious liberals in the anti-war movement and the environmental movement.
One last point, and this is crucial: what anyone else at TSZ says about religion has no bearing on me except insofar as I explicitly endorse it. No one speaks for me but me, and I don’t speak for anyone but myself.
walto,
walto, you’ve forgotten wrong in the past. This is another example. But the desire you have to want me to have said that is understood.
Why is this so important to you?
You can try, Neil, but I’ll never let you move me out of there. I’m gunning for KN at absolute basement, and not quitting till I succeed.
#rump_bottom!
petrushka,
Because it belies the image of ‘balance’ and ‘open to all voices’ when really, it is politically dominated by atheists and thus a skewed representation of society.
walto,
Actually, KN is not in that ‘rude, mean, insulting’ group imo. He’s another story.
But 4 of those aggressive atheist mosquitos have gathered here in this thread.