The Self-Besotted Philosopher and other political nuttery at Only Sky

Yes, that's you, Jonathan M.S. Pearce. That is, if it's not The Self-Besotted Asshole.

As I told him on Twitter a month ago, his insistence that I had to watch one of his three different daily videos on geopolitics to really understand the Russia-Ukraine war came off like History for Atheists' Tim O'Neill insisting years ago that I had to listen to his podcast.

They're peas on a pod to a fair degree, only Pearce's asshole stretches wider.

This is an expansion of a post about the ongoing nuttery of Gnu and semi-Gnu Atheism at Only Sky, from a month ago.

Specifically, I got into a Twitter spat with him over that post.

And in that post, I linked this: "Putin's Russian sacrifice at the Chinese altar." It's a compendium of modern Western imperialist stances against both countries, something any Nat-see Nutsack, per a term at my main blog, would love.

And, yes, the political bothers me as does the Gnu or semi-Gnu Atheism. Especially given, per one of my previous blog posts, with this link, Pearce is already a documented Islamophobe. As does the fusion of secular humanism and atheism I noted a year ago. None of that is likely to change. (Sadly, Patheos totally 86-ed all atheist blogs when chasing away said bloggers; the Wayback Machine may have them, but maybe not.)

Spanky has since told me all about his separate "channel" for geopolitics and talked about a genocidal dictator. I trumped him with the 2014 Odessa genocide, which he didn't directly refute, the Amnesty International report on Ukrainian war crimes, reading Ivan Katchanovski and more.

He came back with a shitload of shit. After again saying watch my videos he came on with smears. Said I was being a Putin apologist. Called Katchanovski a "Kremlin apologist," and cited this blog with his name on it, full of post-Maidan smears and half truths, plus the Bulwark, as proof. (If the author's proposed name is real, of course a Ukrainian Lt. Gen, retired, Igor Romanenko, is going to make up bullshit.) 

Romanenko's first piece is a repost of Cathy Young at The Bulwark. Second? From Ian Roms at British site The Sceptic. Roms himself appears to be some sort of all-around wingnut, and a Zionist genocidalist. The site he writes at was formerly "Lockdown Sceptics." In other words, COVID bullshitters.

Taras Kuzio, cited in multiple pieces? Much of his early work, per that Wiki link, was funded by the CIA, even if he was personally unaware. He also has beaucoup research ties to neocons and general US (and UK) Nat-Sec Nutsacks,™ 

Later smears on Katchanovski portray him as not really an academic and more. In reality, though not having a Wiki page, sadly, he is very much an academic. He is cited in both the English and Polish Wiki pages about the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and is polite enough to describe the OUN as nationalist-fascist rather than Nazi-fascist, as some others do. He also, interestingly, studied under Seymour Martin Lipset, known as "one of the first neocons," when Lipset was at George Mason. Maybe some Ukrainians, and some Nat-Sec Nutsacks, expected a Katchanovski would not turn out as he did?

I've wasted enough time on Romanenko other than to note his slurs extend well before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

I don't know the pre-war dislike of Katchanovski other than his refusal to spout the post-Maidan party line on the Maidan. The first piece by Romanenko, a massive undigested lump in both English and Ukrainian, is from 2015. 

Here's what seems to be a good, relatively neutral analysis of Katchanovski's claims about the Maidan. The author claims that he overstates some things, like conclusiveness of who fired from the Hotel Ukraine, while adding that a fair amount of his big picture holds up. (That site's "about" calls itself a left-wing Ukrainian media group focused on economic issues. Note that Katchanovski's first book was about labor issues and that's his background with Lipset.)

Spanky Pierce then claimed, contra his OnlySky piece, that he does actual complexity on this issue. Said the AI piece was controversial.

I called him out on the straight smears. Called him out on his "complexity" claims being hypocritical. Said I knew AI had been called controversial and knew by who and why. Muted and exited Twitter convo.

And, since then, I see he's hoist by his own lying petard. A January piece has him openly calling this a proxy war (a rare bit of honesty in his take on something), and going on to say "we" must win this.  

The piece is also disgustingly anti-Kantian, talking about NATO wargaming via Ukraine, etc. In other words, fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian used as an object.

And, late last year, he showed himself in one piece to be both a conspiracy theorist and also either a liar or ignorant about past years of history of Russia-Belarus relations. In fact, on his conspiracy theory, two months later, Belarusian opposition leaders, who would have reason to stoke a Putin poisoning if it happened, admitted Belarussian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei was a suicide.

And, since you claim to be a philosopher, you want me to watch your videos knowing you wrote THAT?

That said, beyond his Western imperialist blatherings, there's nothing worth reading in Only Sky's whole "war and peace" vertical. M.L. Clark doesn't say anything wrong on Israel, but she doesn't say anything you couldn't find in The New Republic 3 years ago, in The Nation 5 or more, and in Counterpunch 20 years ago. Daniel Sharp claiming the Iraq War was worth it is of course monging for neoconservativism. Andrew Fiala, in arguing for a war crimes tribunal, does admit that Ukraine has committed an apparent violation or two, and then goes on to talk about My Lai and Abu Ghraib trials. Both were actually laughable. The people giving orders generally escaped trial, and even those following them generally got off lightly. Why? The US was trying itself, of course. Interesting that Falia does NOT talk about Slobodan Milosevic being in the ICC dock. Nor does he talk about the hypocrisy of the US not being an ICC signatory. Nor, beyond torture of Iraqis and other war crimes, does Fiala talk about US use of depleted uranium. Let me introduce you to Joshua Frank on that subject.

And, with that, that's enough wasted for many months. The only thing to add is that this is again proof that atheism and secular humanism aren't necessarily the same thing.

No, let me add one other thing.

In that previous post, I misspelled his last name. (I had gotten it correct in previous posts.) He called me out on Twitter. I apologized, said I would correct it, and did. Never a thank-you back.

Self-Besotted Philosopher, or Asshole.

Per Pierce's comment below, and my reply, let's go to this tweet:

What a bizarre situation when someone (@real_gadfly) is incredibly rude about you in a public piece, and when I mention he's spelled my name wrong, then adds a further insult at the end for me not thanking him for correcting my name?!?! How bizarre. (I hadn't even checked back.)

— Jonathan MS Pearce (@ATipplingPhilo) May 21, 2023

Going beyond whether I was rude or not, he doesn't engage with the facts on the ground. Being a conspiracy theorist on Russia-Ukraine issues right there means his opinions on anything associated with the war deserve discounting.

Openly admitting this is a proxy war, plus his Islamophobia? Calls into account any claim of his to be a secular humanist.

And, per my comment below, he utters a shitload of smears on Twitter then accuses me of being rude? 

Tell this to your Jason Boyd fanboi. Or is it sock puppet with 33 following, 0 followers, no tweets, and only replies apparently being to you.

As for Boyd? 

Once a legend always a legend..being rude is ignorance.
Ignore it.

— Jason Boyd (@jboyd49642) May 21, 2023

Since I'm not ignorant, then I'm not rude! Thanks! You're also right on JMSP being a "legend," but probably not in the way he meant it.

Update, June 27: I'm sure JMSP and others at Only Sky are, like US-UK mainstream media and Nat-sec Nutsacks, gloating triumphally over the non-coup (as in, it was a mutiny, not a coup) of Yevgeny Prigozhin and claiming this means Russia is about to fall apart. They'd be wrong.

Another pseudoskeptical fail by Michael Shermer

Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational by Michael Shermer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is an expanded version of the Goodreads review for inside baseball Skeptics™,pseudoskepticism reasons. Semi-regular readers here should know that I'm not a huge fan of Shermer, and this book only makes it worse. 

Let's dig in on the expansion.

This is a horrible book, not on the conspiracy theories, which I don't need Shermer to tell me, but on him totally getting wrong the one actual conspiracy he discusses, which is why this is 1-starred on a grok.

Rather than there being JUST and ONLY an Austrian conspiracy against Serbia in 1914, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand instead traces directly through one "Apis," head of both Serbian military intelligence and the secret society named The Black Hand, and also directly or semi-directly through confederates of Apis in the nationalist organization Narodna Odbrana, to Serbian Prime Minister Pasic. All of this and more is documented by Christopher Clark in the excellent book "The Sleepwalkers," which Shermer ACTUALLY REFERENCES and then ignores for Tim Butcher's "The Trigger," which is
A. A piece of crap and
B. Only about 10-20 percent about lead assassin Gavrilo Princip and 80-90 percent directly or indirectly about Tim Butcher.

Shermer's right that this is arguably the world's deadliest conspiracy. He's dead wrong about where the conspiracy started.

==

The rest of the book, without this egregious ax-grinding, would probably be 3 stars, no more, so, even without this, it's not worth a read. It's a basic definition of conspiracy vs conspiracy theories, basic overview on why many people believe in conspiracy theories, and how to try to talk to them.

But, surely Shermer could have found something else to discuss as a true conspiracy. Rather, it appears that, following in Butcher's footsteps despite having read Clark's documenting the likely ties to the Serbian government, and despite mentioning the Black Hand, even in an overall superficial treatment (and even talking about an assassination conspiracy, though trying to limit it to just the Black Hand, if that), he thought he could use some intellectual judo to show an Austrian conspiracy.

In reality, despite Conrad having been pushing for pre-emptive war with Serbia for years, even after the assassination, the Dual Monarchy was divided on going to war. And, trying to treat its Byzantine turns in just a few pages will be a good way to get superficial treatment even if not wrong — which, of course, Shermer is. And, I can say that as having read "The Sleepwalkers" TWICE. 

==

It's also bad for those other, inside baseball reasons.

First, citing libertarian pseudoskeptic and convicted felon Brian Dunning will get you nowhere in my book.

Second and related, attacking the tobacco merchants and climate change deniers when, at a minimum, I don't think you have ever publicly called out Penn and Teller for promoting both of them, and I'm not sure they've ever backtracked on climate change, is an issue. You yourself, in fact, albeit to a lesser degree than Dunning, have mixed libertarianism and skepticism at times.

In addition, you and Dunning blocked me at Skepticblog, in part because I called out both you and Dunning on the libertarian pseudoskepticism, and you and the Not-So-Always-Amazing Randi also had at least a couple of toes in the world of #MeToo problems, and also, at Skeptic mag, you've been at a minimum, a racialist fellow traveler. And, to tie this all into one nice neat bow, the actual Serbian conspiracies, of which its prime minister almost certainly had some foreknowledge, and its army intelligence even more? Driven by ethnic-based Serbian nationalism, which isn't too many stones' throws away from racialism, as Serbia's post-1989 history shows. (Not that Croatia's been a lot better.)

View all my reviews

Skeptophilia — a closet semi-believer?

 Over at my main blog, I have Skeptophilia, a blog by Gordon Bonnet, on my blogroll. It's generally good stuff, but at times, more than once, I've wondered how skeptical he is on some things.

For example, I think he wants to believe that there's "life out there" and so sets the bar lower on Drake Equation issues. On something else, he linked uncritically to a guy in Houston, a pastor or similar but not a Ph.D. archaeologist from an accredited university, who claims to have found a curse tablet at Mount Ebal that had the name of Yahweh on it dated to circa 1200 BCE. (More here on how much of a circular reasoning fail it is, in a generally good r/AcademicBiblical piece except the one fundagelical there.) In another post, he claims that a coin in the name of otherwise generally unattested Roman emperor Sponson is legit, when it's nowhere near settled among numismatists. I blogged together about both, then separately about his claim about extinct gomphotheres and distribution of some trees in North America.

And, on this site, I recently noted (He's "Tales of Whoa" on Twitter) that his willingness to believe humans are hardwired to know the difference between happy and sad music was based on a survey of dubious scientific value, if any. Given that he's an avid amateur musician, he should have noted my caveats about Western vs non-Western, as well as pre-Baroque, or even more, pre-Renaissance vs modern major-minor Western music. As a retired AP science teacher, he should have noted the small sample size and other issues.

And, now, there's his post last week about ChatGPT threatening to replace pastors' sermons. First, as someone who's a PK with a graduate divinity degree, this ignores that many a pastor has been preaching out of either sermon books or online equivalents for decades if not centuries. Second, pastors and priests and rabbis, at least in denominations where they work full time, do much more than lead religious services.

Anyway, there's this from that post:

To make my own stance clear right from the get-go, I'm what the philosophers call a de facto atheist -- I'm not a hundred percent sure there's no higher power (mostly because I'm not a hundred percent sure of anything), but the complete lack of hard evidence tilts me in the direction of disbelief. As far as spiritual concerns, like the existence of a soul (or at least "something more" than our physical being), I'm an agnostic. There is a great deal of weird shit out there that might be explainable by virtue of some sort of non-materialistic model -- but it might just as well have to do with a combination of our own flawed cognitive processes and incomplete understanding of science. (If you have five minutes, watch this video by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder about why quantum wackiness doesn't support the existence of souls. I'm not as convinced as she is, but wherever you're starting, belief-wise, it'll get you thinking.)

Really?

He's interesting enough in many ways that I don't think I would de-blogroll him over there, but I wouldn't add him over here. Not even with him calling himself a hardcore skeptic on April 19.

Update, Aug. 14, 2024: He's a semi-believer in "Fortean phenomona," too, per this post with link to a Vimeo short about one short story from the book he mentions that was movie-ized. The video, at least, with all of its cliched moments, is purely in the land of tall tales, contra Bonnet.

Top blogging, fourth quarter 2022

 A quarterly roundup of the most read blog posts of the past three months. Not all were new to the past three months.

No. 1, "Libertarian pseudoskeptical pseudoscience," about Brian Dunning above all, but also the Novella brothers, Steve Pinker and others, from 2010, most certainly isn't new, but remains very true.

No. 2, "Do you have free will? Is that even a discussable issue?" also from 2010, is an extensive look at a critical area of philosophy.

No. 3, "Texas science ed director resigns over ID-creationist pressure" is even older, from 2007. I suspect it's gained new life due to the recent book bans plaguing public school and community libraries here in Tex-ass.

No. 4, "Antichrist vs the man of lawlessness vs the beast ..." was given new life by me when I posted this New Testament criticism piece to the Academic Biblical subreddit.

No. 5, "Genesis 6 retold," is a very old poetic look by me at the flood story possibly reflecting an Ouranos-like castration myth.

No. 6, "Paul, Passover, Gnosticism," like No. 4, got a "goose" from posting at Academic Biblical, mainly for the idea that Paul invented the Eucharist, along with his inspiration there, and more.

No. 7, "The great ahistoricity of Acts and radical thoughts about Paul's demise," is the first on the list from 2022 and is exactly what its title says.

No. 8, "Who wrote the book of Revelation?" offers my thought for a multi-stage process with a non-Christian core. Another piece from many years ago, it too was signal-boosted by me on Reddit.

No. 9, "Split the log and I am there: Reflections on the Gospel of Thomas and beyond," was inspired by high-country hiking in the Rockies last summer. It includes photography of something that was part of a "secular spiritual experience," multilingual punning and more.

No. 10: "Jeff Kloha could have a new boss soon," was about my old Sem classmate, now cleaning up the Augean stables of Hobby Lobby's Museum of the Bible, in light of the announcement that the Hobby Lobby's Green family planned to sell the company to a nonprofit (with various loopholes, like Patagonia who inspired it).

Top blogging of 2021

 Not all posts are from the past year, but these were the most popular by readership in the past year.

No. 1? Remains my calling out of Anthony Fauci for telling Platonic noble lies about mask-wearing or not, back in 2020. (He'd later tell other lies, first semi-noble, then totally mundane ones.

No. 2? My decade-ago calling out of the likes of Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer for engaging in libertarian pseudoscience pseudoskepticism.

No. 3? It's interesting it's trended this high, but it's a blog post of mine from last year about an Atlantic Monthly contributor, and (former?) regular Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter, for the weirdness, if you will, of his story about when he stopped (for a while) being an "ambulance chaser" because his own wreck made him an ambulance needer. My piece covered "PTSD, journalism, accidents, existentialism." The first three were involved; the fourth was my angle of entry.

No. 4? Veering to critical religion — not critical exegesis of texts, but criticism of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and all the hypocritical dirtiness in its closure of Concordia University-Portland (with the denouement still ahead in the snarls of multiple lawsuits).

No. 5? My untangling of the "Young Hume" vs "Old Hume" on Pyrrhonism and more. Part of a serious of extended posts inspired by David Harris' critically acclaimed, yet actually somewhat spotty, recent biography.

No. 6? In which I told Jesus mythicists that Nazareth is real, and more to the point, was real 1st Century CE.

No. 7? The later semi-noble lies of Fauci got examined, in a psychological take on him and a sociological one on tribalist Democrats.

No. 8? A relatively recent one, showing how Harvey Whitehouse's ideas on the evolution of religion, by not being grounded in good philosophy of religion, jumped the shark. Sadly, it appears that the likes of a Scott Atran, by heading down a similar ev psych-based road, may also be "jumping."

No. 9? I pretty thoroughly deconstructed David Graeber's posthumously coauthored new book. (I even more thoroughly deconstructed its political angles at my main blog.)

No. 10? A philosophy and philosophy of science question is wrestled with: How do we define "life"?

Top blogging of July-September

Data is of early October. Not all posts were written in the past three months.

First was my hard-hitting modern religion piece on the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and its multiple ethical failures and looming massive legal problems over the closure of Concordia University-Portland.

Second was my long-ago, but still relevant, libertarian pseudoskepticism pseudoscience piece about Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer.

Third was my not nearly so long ago, but even more still relevant, piece about Saint Anthony of Fauci and his telling of Platonic noble lie(s). (It eventually became plural, then Not.Even.Platonic.Or.Noble, to riff on Wolfgang Pauli.)

Fourth is from about 15 months ago, but getting new eyeballs when I retweeted it about the dreck that is this year's Dallas Symphony Orchestra schedule. I said the DSO had stepped backward in hiring Fabio Luisi as music director.

Fifth? Almost as old as my Dunning-Shermer piece, but also about classical music: Stravinsky vs. Prokofiev and what constitutes neoclassicism.

Sixth, a recent piece, about how Harvey Whitehouse seemed promising on new studies on the origin of religion, until he went way wrong on both that and a definition of what religion is.

Seventh? My burning take on the often laughable, usually conceited Mark Carrier thinking early Christians believed Jesus was a space alien.

Eighth, and also recent, my philosophical take on an ambulance-chasing journalist's experience with PTSD after his own car crash, and a psychologist discussing the issue with bad takes on free will and control.

Ninth and also nearly a decade old, like No. 2 and No. 5? My take on reviews of books by Dan Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter.

Tenth and trending probably due to a tweet by my to blogging friend Tales of Whoa? My poem about the death of friend Leo Lincourt, "Sitting Shtetl for the Living."

Top blogging of April-June

Unlike at my main blog, I don't think it's productive to do a top blogging of the month post.

But, top blogging of the quarter, instead of only an annual roundup? Why not?

So, here goes the first run.

No. 1? An oldie but a goodie from a year ago. St. Anthony of Fauci’s Platonic “noble” lie about masks.

No. 2? PTSD, journalism and existentialism, about a weird piece in Atlantic from an ambulance-chaser reporter.

No. 3? The other Platonic lies of Fauci.

No. 4? “Once more on Hume and slavery,” part of a series deconstructing his thought on Africans and other things.

No. 5? Libertarian pseudoskeptical pseudoscience is about Brian Dunning above all, then about Michael Shermer, then about Skeptics™ in general and even older than Fauci takes. 

No. 6? It's kind of related to No. 5. Skeptatheism, fossilized looks at fossilization in Skeptics™ and Gnu Atheist movements.

No. 7? Martin Luther vs. Charles V, part of my Reformation 500 series.

No. 8? Talking about Jeff Kloha and Hobby Lobby in my personalized connection to Museum of the Bible’s Dead Sea Scrolls forgery.

No. 9? A non-gnu atheist has thoughts from seeing his first May Crowning.

No. 10? In response to Zionists and others, the true meaning of Hanukkah.

Skeptatheism: Fossilized?

What follows is a reworking of a sort of "takedown" obiturary about the death of the so-called Amazing Randi, done on my main blog shortly after his death.

I posted that link in comments when a Hucksterman Village friend of a friend extolled a new YouTube channel talking about how many hits it had gotten, and from there, talking about essentially how valuable he still was.

The "capture" for the video at Susan Gerbic's post talks about "the magician who exposed fakes, frauds and charlatans."

Did that include himself? The (Not so) Amazing Randi, aka, The Amazing (Deceiver) Randi, as I called him.

From lesser to greater?

There's his libertarianism that enabled the likes of Penn and Teller to be denialist about secondhand smoke as a carcinogen, and to still be denialist about things like climate change. That's too common in movement skepticism; Michael Shermer is yet another prominent member, at least partially influenced by Randi, who has conflated some version of modern movement (it's NOT "scientific," per the above, so I don't call it that) skepticism with philosophical and political libertarianism.

Yes, it's true per the Hucksterman friend, that Randi repented of that one himself, and admitted (to some degree at least) that anthropogenic climate change is real.

But, that's the lesser.

Next, there's his condoning of #MeToo related problems in movement skepticism. (And, allegedly, Shermer was part of those problems, too.)

Finally, Randi almost certainly knew that his long-time lover, Devyi Peña, was an identity thief. Hiring him at JREF, the nepotism wouldn't look good even without the above. That, of course, makes it worse. Even if Randi didn't know that Peña had engaged in willful criminality, the hiring made it look like he did know and was trying to protect him. That's the greater, or greatest.

All the information two paragraphs up, plus Shermer's history, is documented here. More on Shermer here. That documentation notes that this goes back to the time of Paul Kurtz as founder of CFI. (Randi as founder of JREF, as much as Kurtz at CFI, also fell willing victim to founders syndrome.)

Related? Randi started sniffing his own press clippings too much later in life. The claims that Peña magically (I see what I did there) skeptically enlightened most of Australia have been put paid to by many people, for example.

But, many in the movement skeptic world still believe that Peña was magic. They also believe Randi knew nothing about Peña's background. Etc. In short? Enablers to some degree. Beyond Randi sniffing his own press clippings too much in later life, on #MeToo, and on Peña I think, and on founder's syndrome in general, he had too many enablers. He should have been nudged out of leading JREF at least half a decade before he actually was.

Now, to the "fossilized" and related matters.

I next shared this on MeWe, and tagged a friend who has, like me, long left both movement skepticism and organized atheism behind. Like me, he was never in the "hierarchy," but at one time was a much more interested follower, as was I.

He mentioned the word "fossilized."

That's like founder's syndrome on steroids? Or frozen founder's thought or something?

I do agree. 

I think that, per discussion on one social media site, "fossilized" is a good word to describe JREF, and other orgs, whether "movement skepticism" or Gnu Atheism like the Freedom from Religion Foundation, aka the folks who once tried to claim that Abraham Lincoln was an atheist. 

I don't know as much about their fundraising psychology as I do, say, major environmental organizations, but I suspect there's a certain amount of crisis-mongering, which mingles with a certain amount of tar-babying off the Religious Right.

In addition, founders syndrome is semi-cultic, something that any good skeptic should steer clear of, of course. And, yes, that "good" is deliberate.

But, if you're part of the movement? There's all the behavioral psychology issues at play, like "sunk costs" and "loss aversion." These and related issues don't just play out capitalistically.

Indeed, I think that prompted a back-and-forth with a non-friend to me of the Hucksterman friend of a friend, who I web-searched after that conversation played out.

And, in turn, that leads to the question of sunk costs versus the flip side of that coin: a rise in the hierarchy.

Phil Stilwell made, I believe, a comment on Gerbic's post that said, in essence, "don't make it about the person." Since she deleted the entire thread that started with my comment, as I had that page open, I couldn't see it when I got notified that he had commented. Clicking the notification bubble led to a non-existent thread. But, as he is a skeptic insider himself, and nowhere else in that 24-hour time span had I commented on someone else's post other than in a nature group that wasn't about people, that's what it had to be.

Editorial clarification from when I was still blogging on this, after my initial write-up but before I posted this. (I've noted both here and on my primary blog, even more, how I'll spend weeks writing serious, in-depth posts to let them percolate. It will be interlaced, in italics, with the original.

Well, I posted "thank god for screengrabs" then tagged him in my first comment to that. In a back and forth of comments, I may have been less than totally clear originally, but at some point, I believe he moved beyond mildly puzzled at my train of thought to trying to gaslight me.

It WASN'T Stilwell. In cleaning up my computer desktop, I actually looked at the screengrab. 

It was David Glück, a Facebook friend.

I did the right thing on Hucksterman Central. Apologized to Stilwell, with tagging him.

AND, at the same time, asked if he'd care to share what he DID say.

As for Glück? Since he agrees with me more than disagrees on Elizabeth Loftus, about whom I've blogged a bit here and a lot at my main blog, he should know if one is looking at a person's ethics, it can't be anything but personal in that sense. I don't know what follows the ellipsis points. But, the basic issue is, that when the whole idea is that another person's character needs, in one person's opinion, re-examining, then it's going to be re-examined!

That said, I did search up Stilwell on the Net. He wasn't gaslighting me, obviously, but whatever he did say, I'm sure it wasn't favorable. And with that, back to the original.

And, from his perspective, why not?

Seeing as how he got lucky enough to get played up by the likes of Jonathan M.S. Pearce, for whom I have less and less respect, as a deconversion success story, and you've been a regular commenter on the major skeptatheism sites, I'm sure of what you said, even if it's now gone. His being an apparent Islamophobe doesn't help his cause.

 Re movement skepticism, I've long said that it could stand to learn some philosophical Skepticism. Re the Gnu Atheist orgs, since the "nones" are growing fast — but aren't really atheist, contra Gnus — there's definite tar-babyism as far as how American religious demographics are changing. On the secular humanist world, per said friend, it should be focusing on things like the dehumanization factors of the "always on" world, or the future of the precariat (the word I first heard from the late Leo Lincourt) and other socio-economic issues.

Lots of Gnus don't like to admit that the concept of antitheism is in any way true. That's even though Camus mentions it in "The Rebel" before getting to his true modern original sin — blind allegiance to communism.

But, to riff on Voltaire? If god didn't exist, antitheist-type atheists would have to invent the concept of him to have someone to rebel against. (Camus, in "The Rebel," explicitly says antitheists enjoy having the concept of a god to rebel against.

Back to the "fossilization." And the fundraising. Even though Nones (not necessary atheist, or agnostic, or even non-theist, but at least not conventionally religious, either fundamentalist or non-fundmentalist) are growing faster in the US than members of any Western monotheism and certainly faster than any main division within Christianity, movement atheist groups aren't going to tell you that.

And, anything is a "hook" for this. Like Freedom from Religion Foundation, per my main blog, trying to claim eight years ago that Lincoln was really an atheist. I believe that was for the visibility level first, yes, but for the fundraising angle second.

On the secular humanist world, per said friend, it should be focusing on things like the dehumanization factors of the "always on" world, or the future of the precariat (the word I first heard from the late Leo Lincourt) and other socio-economic issues. (Said friend mentioned Paul Kurtz and the Council for Secular Humanism et al as also being among the fossilized.)

Movement skepticism groups haven't pivoted from things like evolution to climate change — not only denied by too many Republicans but minimized by too many Democrats. And, while they may look at things like antivaxxerism, they're likely to point first at New Agey type leftist woomeisters long before they point at libertarians. (Antivaxxerism in SoCal, for example, is just as much a problem among both libertarian and Religious Right types in Orange County as among woos in Hollywood.)

 

Also in regard to movement skepticism, I've long said that it could stand to learn some philosophical Skepticism. I've mentioned that to "movement" insiders, even mid-level majordomos. No real bites on that. And, there's been some, like Barbara Drescher, who have even been openly anti-philosophy.

Finally, to tie this back to Gerbic. Deleting comment that is NOT "hateful," but is real, albeit strongly put? Skeptics censoring dissent? I had already let my actual Hucksterman friend have the last word. Then Stilwell weighed in, and when I tried to respond to him, she had deleted the "hateful" comment and thread.

As for Glück? I did not unfriend him. I did remove him from my "skeptical friends" list ... and I did add him to my "acquaintances" list. That could be changed back in the future, but, for now, that's the way it is.

Next? Orac. Until I searched my main blog, I forgot about my history of past issues with him.

Having tangled with Orac twice now over issues related to St. Anthony of Fauci, and knowing that Movement Skeptics / Skeptics™ are their own set of tribalists, I've looked back further at his paean to Randi.

First, I'm sure that Orac is more than a micro-celebrity, and certainly more than a nano-celebrity, within Skeptics™. Such modesty!

Second, to get to some meat? Orac ignores Peña. Flat-out ignores him. Never discusses him. Not just the ID theft, but the allegations of shammery in Australia. If that's not intellectual dishonesty?

Third, he doesn't tackle the issue of founder's syndrome. Since Paul Kurtz had shown it several years prior, and to some degree, like Randi, on #MeToo issues, this wasn't good, either. I mean, Orac even commented, as I blogged about, a non-MeToo problem with Kurtz.

Fourth, he (and fellow travelers at NECSS) have evidenced tribalism and twosiderism before! I forgot about John Horgan calling him out, and them, five years ago, and that I blogged about that. What Orac in his insolence really hated was getting called out by someone at his pay and fame grade. (I also wonder how much both Orac and Steve Novella, per that link, disliked Horgan's comments not on skepticism, but on fee-for-service medicine. Orac strikes me as a mainstream neolib Democrat type who at a minimum isn't highly favorable to single-payer national health care.)

Fourth, part 2: Per Horgan, and contra Orac, the asshole wasn't Horgan. Besides Orac and Novella, it was first Jamy Ian Swiss. That said, for not having a single word of praise, Orac and Novella are assholes themselves. I might wind up writing something just about Orac at some point!

Fourth, part 3: The likes of Orac, though not a lot himself personally (rather, Shermer, Randi, philosophy-hating Barbara Drescher and philosophy-minimalizing mild Daniel Loxton) are part of why I don't call myself a skeptic any more, and haven't for five years, like Massimo — at least not without the word "philosophy" or "philosophical" attached. (I suspect that Orac's probably not big on philosophy, either.)

Fifth? Beyond "fossilized," per Horgan, tribalist and twosiderist are major problems.

Top blogging of 2019

 It was a very interesting year here by what readers liked.

A mix of debunking, takes on things Luther, pseudoscience debunking, philosophical hot takes and my poetry made up the 10 posts most read by readers this last year. More than half of the posts were pre-2019, but that's fine. Good stuff ages well.

No. 1? A decade-old blog post that I'd originally forgotten to put a header on and that eventually took off. (Spammers, maybe?) It was about "libertarian pseudoskeptic pseudoscience" and looked at some of the worst in pseudoskepticism, and sometimes pseudoscience, by leading libertarian lights in the Skeptics™ world like Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer.

No. 2? My take on a recent revelation that  early research on which Benjamin Libet based his "brain delay" studies, "undermines his research angle but also reinforces his philosophical scrivening." I chided some not to throw out the baby with the bath water; in other words, Libet ain't dead yet.

No. 3? My rewrite and update on Edward Arlington Robinson's classic "Richard Cory."

No. 4? A throwaway post, at least on the surface, from a decade ago. I encouraged intellectual types to be themselves in making small talk.

No. 5? An update to a 2017 blog post, where I further call out the cultural Catholicism lies of alleged atheist Tim O'Neill and his History for Atheists blog. (I found out, in the process of the update, that I'm far from alone.)

No. 6? Gun Nuts for Luther? Headquartered here in Tex-ass? My brother a member of their Facebook group? Whoda thunk? Here's the details.

No. 7? More Luther, this time my extended review of Lyndal Roper's 2017 biography. A solid 4-star work, but at the end of the year, with books newish and older, I still hadn't found a total 5-star tome.

No. 8? My uncle died just over a year ago. Rather than attend the funeral and be laden with religion and religious-based guilt-tripping, I wrote a poem about all that.

No. 9? Also from late 2018? I smacked around Andrew Sullivan for his latest (at that time) stupidities, and attached one of my most delightful Photoshoppings.

No. 10? Daring to touch the third rail of American foreign policy discussions, and based in part on my review of Yuval Noah Harari's "Homo Deus," I dared ask "Who's a Jew vis-a-vis Zionist claims?"

Finally, it was the most productive year blogging here since 2012. It's given me a diversion from my main blog. And, as 2019 readers can see, for the next two years, expect more Lutheran Reformation 500th anniversary posts.

So Sharon Hill is no longer a skeptic

Sharon Hill of I Doubt It has finally seen the light and is leaving movement skepticism or Skeptics™. She mostly gets the reasons right, though in calling out scientism she doesn't get into larger anti-philosophy attitudes among many Skeptics™ folks who aren't necessarily scientism types. That's you, Barb Drescher. Still haven't forgotten you and your UCSB ev psych-leaning friend.

Too bad Hill herself likely isn't apologizing for fostering the cult of Brian Dunning. Nor does she take note of the likes of me or former top notch Skeptics™paralleler Massimo Pigliucci calling out all the things she has, and more, more than the five years ago that she says was the bottom of the movement.

Beyond her personal role in the sullying of the movement skepticism brand, she's apparently not aware of Jeff Wagg and Naomi Baker's even bigger black eye.

Nor does she look beyond tribalism at other issues involved — money and power. When one makes more than $100,000 a year for running a fairly small nonprofit, oh, like some California libertarian-neoliberal guy and the James Randi Educational Foundation, but not to name names, one has a vested interest in promoting both the brand and the tribalism used to keep it propped up.

Her own part in rebranding I guess includes dumping the old I Doubt It blog for her new website.

That said, there's other funniness in her "I'm not a Skeptic" schtick. She says that movement skepticism isn't hip enough on technology. Really? So, skepticsm is about marketing as much as anything, then? Does she now have a YouTube channel? A "brand"?

It's also funny to see her lack of skepticism toward attention whore Bill Nye and the allegedly "hands on" Neil DeGrasse Tyson, of whom the first allegations against him were already floating around at this time.

#Skeptic fail: #Dunning, #Shermer have blocked me at Skepticblog

Looks like I can post about a bit of New Year's Eve "skeptic" (as opposed to actual skeptics) fireworks and narrow-mindedness.

I have apparently been blacklisted from posting comments at SkepticBlog, one of the allegedly top blogs for alleged skeptics. Anyway, that's what WordPress tells me when I try to post comments there.


Apparently, my last comment on libertarian and selective skeptic Brian Dunning's latest blog post, trying to poo-poo the idea that biopiracy exists (sorry, no links if you're going to blacklist me), including a snarky aside about Dunning's upcoming court date on civil and criminal fraud allegations, was too much.

I will, speaking of that, give you this link though, to a previous blog post of mine about Dunning's legal woes and their connection to his libertarianism and selective skepticism. I'll also give you this link to a blog post of mine about how I apparently had a comment on another post of Dunning's deleted a couple of months ago.



That said, Dunning's not the sole proprietor of the blog. In fact, it's theoretically headed by his fellow libertarian and selective skeptic, Michael Shermer, editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine. So, any "block" decision ultimately falls



And, just as Gnu Atheists are a reason I don't primarily identify myself as an atheist, libertarian selective skeptics like Shermer, Dunning, magicians Penn/Teller and many others who deliberately conflate libertarianism and skepticism are another reason.


But, there's yet another reason.


More generally reasonable skeptics, like Daniel Loxton, have too narrow a definition of skepticism.


On this blog, I identify myself as a skeptical left-liberal (in U.S. terms, at least, I'm a left-liberal). That is, I apply skepticism to my own political stances and views. But, folks like Loxton don't want to apply skepticism to politics, or even too much to psychology or sociology, instead focusing on claims testable within the "harder" natural sciences only.


And, in addition to that, folks like Loxton are generally thinly informed on the history of Skepticism the philosophy. Were this not the case, and they had a deeper grounding in Philosophy 101, they wouldn't have such a narrow view of what "skepticism" is or should be.


That said, that's one blog to scratch off my reading list again. I went back there regularly about two years ago because friend Leo Lincourt said Shermer was posting less in the way of libertarian stuff there.


Well, he started again, and Dunning made up for that in spades.


And, I didn't think I'd have anything to blog about more than a trip to Austin (nothing big) or Iowa caucus thoughts

Science, scientism, skepticism, atheism, ethics

I'd been meaning to write a post like this for some time. Various issues within the worlds of science, philosophy, skepticism (which has a foot in both science and philosophy) and related issues have finally nudged me forward.

The first biggie was Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape." I was pleasantly surprised when philosopher Massimo Pigliucci's review on Amazon largely agreed with mine in not only noting that Harris didn't have a good handle on morals and ethics issues in general, but also engaged in thought processes that rightfully could be called scientism.

Then, having read P.Z. Myers (he denies it, but Bob Carroll has a similar take on P.Z.) and Vic Stenger, amongst so-called Gnu Atheists, at least halfway claim to have proved the nonexistence of god, led me a bit further forward in this direction.

Add in the fact that, on a few recent posts on Skepticblog, some commenters there don't get, or else choose to ignore, the difference between empirical evidence for/against a particular idea of god vs. philosophical issues about what versions of a deity might logically be able to exist, and the issue grows.

Add in that a Michael Shermer post about SETI adds to what I see as one problem with many of its most ardent boosters: a quasi-religious faith that extraterrestrial life must exist.

Finally, some browsing on Amazon today, where a couple of reviews of a couple of books, bring back to mind claims that fundamentalist Christians make about horrific atheist murderers, i.e., Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and atheists, especially but not just Gnu Atheists, claiming that none of that terrible trio were atheists.

Well, now that I've laid all that out, here's where my thoughts go.

I'm going to tackle issues of religious belief, or lack thereof, and morality.

First, the "terrible trio."

Hitler? Yes, we know that he had a Catholic background and upbringing. What his adult religious beliefs are, we don't know. He cozied up to the Catholic church enough to get it to cozy up to him, while yet, early in his reign, ignoring it when he euthanized the mentally handicapped and others. So, let's bracket him.

Stalin? Yes, he went to an Orthdox seminary as a juvenile. So what. John Loftus went to a seminary. So did I. By this weak argument of atheists, John and I are both still Christians. Fact of the matter is, Stalin actively clamped down on Christianity in the Soviet Union, and otherwise gives clear indications of being an atheist. Beyond that, as Wikipedia notes in its article on Marxism and religion, the USSR was officially atheist.

Mao? We still don't know a lot about his personal life, but he gives no indication of being religious in any way.

As for studies which show that fundamentalist and evangelical Christians divorce as much as atheists in particular or nonreligious in general, that's also true. Two observations, though.

First, divorce is only one marker for morals, and isn't even that strong of a marker. Second, if the divorce rates are the same, that doesn't mean religious people are less moral, at least on marriage, just that they're tied.

Finally, because there are so many more religious than irreligious people in the world, for both better and worse, on both sides of the aisle, confirmation bias can easily raise its head. On the side of religious exemplars, that's because they're so many of them. On the side of irreligious exemplars, that's because deviations away from the moral mean stand out so much more.

This all said, more scientists could stand a little more grounding in philosophy. Not anything huge, but a basic college intro course, or better, an intro to logic course.

This leads to another issue, and back to what is called "skepticism" today.

I have a number of observations to make here.

First, many "skeptics" are unfamiliar with skepticism as a philosophy. I politely suggest addressing that.

Second, per my comment above on scientists, many "skeptics" don't know that much philosophy in general.

Third, many "skeptics" are somewhat to very selective in their skepticism. I'm not expecting perfection, but I politely suggest addressing that.

Fourth, true skepticism has become politicized, in part because of reason No. 3 above. I'm not looking for a "purge" of skeptics, unlike P.Z. Myers wanting to purge conservatives from atheism. A conservative skeptic who is honest about anthropogenic global warming is still a skeptic. A conservative "skeptic" who is dishonest about anthropogenic global warming isn't a real skeptic.

And this is why, like a couple of friends of mine, I weary of the world of "professional skepticism" at times. But, per that last point, if pseudoskeptics, including online trolls, aren't stood up to, they win.

Why you shouldn't believe Shermer's 'Believing Brain'

If you want to know why you shouldn't believe Michael Shermer's "The Believing Brain," as well as why, for parts that are any good, you should go to more original resources, read my latest Amazon reviews.

A sample:

Here's derivative and blind spots intersecting -- Shermer briefly, but briefly talks about Kahneman and Tversky's study in behavioral economics (without also citing Ariely, among others). One will learn much more about how irrational human behavior is in matters of economics, and related psychology, by going to the source. Shermer could have had a better book with a whole chapter just on this field.

So, why didn't he? I suspect because he knows how totally behavioral economics chops into little bitty pieces the claims of his beloved Ayn Rand and the Austrian School of Economics.

If you know Michael Shermer, and know he's not all he cracks himself up to be, you're not surprised by that. If you think you know Shermer, but don't necessarily worship the ground he walks on while thinking he is nonetheless a great skeptic, there's plenty more after those first two paragraphs of my review, so click the link and get enlightened.

Academia — hotbed of liberal bias? Or conservative isolation?

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says yes, and, if Michael Shermer is Twittering about this — AND getting info wrong ... the 6-1 ratio is among general faculty, not social scientists! with Shermer thereby bringing his rush-job Tweeting into question — it's going to spread to Palinista land by tomorrow afternoon.

The reality? Probably a bit different.

First, upon what in-depth research did he make this observation?

He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal.

Let's now enumerate all that's wrong with this.

First, political labels are notoriously imprecise among the American populace. Among the 40 percent that label themselves conservatives, many favor more moderate political positions. Prime example: Tea Party grandmas and grandpas telling the government to keep its hands off their Medicare.

Second, short of a position-by-position poll, both among the general public and among academia, there's no telling how you can label people's positions consistently.

Related to that is this:

The politics of the professoriate has been studied by the economists Christopher Cardiff and Daniel Klein and the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons. They’ve independently found that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences.

Is "liberal" 100 percent correlative to "Democrat" and "conservative" to "Republican"? Assuming they're not, how close is the relationship? Do we even know? Are people using a party label for a political stance label?

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that there is a high degree of correlation and that Haidt's observations reflect that, let's ask why this ratio exists.

In a sentence? Christian fundamentalism and evolution. In other words, many Christians are not going to go to mainstream universities, especially top-tier ones, in the hard sciences. (Remember, Shermer, the 6:1 ratio was for general faculty, not just social sciences.)

In a second sentence? Alternative takes on the social sciences.

Especially for fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, the mainstream psychological take on things from gay marriage to what is appropriate child discipline are going to keep conservative Xns away from those disciplines at mainstream universities, too.

In a third sentence? It's the political wars.

With the Federalist Society, the best entree is a JD at a non-mainstream school, like Regent University's law school. Places like that are starting their own political science and public policy graduate schools in more numbers, too, for similar reasons

If Haidt went to private colleges, what would he find there?

As I Tweeted Shermer:

What if Haidt went to Xn colleges? Would you be shocked/offended at 6:1 conservative ratio?

I wouldn't be shocked, myself. And I'm not shocked.

I am a bit shocked, though honestly, not at all surprised, at the cheapness of Micheal Shermer's thought.

Libertarianism, skepticism shouldn't be mixed

The potentially extended about dangers of mixing libertarianism and skepticism? Look at SkepticBlog and some of its recent posts, especially by Michael Shermer and Brian Dunning.

Shermer has been a libertarian of long standing. Outside this blog, as editor of Skeptic magazine, he's been an "enabler" of racialist Frank Miele for what, more than a decade now. Fellow racialist and co-author of "Race" with Miele, Vincent Sarich, is on the editorial board; Miele is listed as "senior editor."

Brian Dunning is currently engaged in bald-faced denialism of his libertarian sourcing, especially Steve Milloy's JunkScience.

Of course, here's why Dunning's such a denialist — Milloy's blatant denialism on global warming is trumpeted on the front page of JunkScience:

Now that the most absurd but potentially catastrophic junk science in human history is unraveling and we are preparing to declare victory over gorebull warbling we can devote more attention to neglected junk.

Taking Liberty -- How Private Property is being Abolished in America

Click here to jump straight to the global warming (a.k.a. "climate change", "global weirding", "people are icky, nasty, weather-breaking critters"... ) section if you so desire.

It's clear from that that Milloy engages in pseudoscience. Dunning was busted on using this website as a source, so hides his embarrassment at his ideological bias being discovered by raging against critics allegedly engaged in conspiracy theories, distortions, not telling him his errors and more.

Steven Novella originally got snookered by Milloy years ago and refusing to weigh in on Dunning's defense of "accidentally using" Milloy now.

Regarding that:

An irony in all of this is that if you go back and listen to early episodes of SGU, the Novella gang praised junkscience as a reputable website. They even had Milloy on to talk about his website (didn't discuss DDT, as far as I can remember). But you can tell that red flags were raised during the interview with Steve Novella, when Milloy was using language suggesting an ideological bias when discussing certain issues. And after that interview, SGU never mentioned junkscience again, except when criticizing it in an interview (I think, with Christopher Mooney). If only Brian had been privy to those early episodes, he may have steered away from the site all-together.

Well, considering that Dunning refuses to pull in his horns, AND that Novella has yet to put up his own post on Skepticblog about this at all, I doubt Dunning would have "steered away." Shermer hasn't steered away from worse; rather, he's gone swimming in it again.

Add, speaking of that, Skepticblog partner No. 4 (more on "partner" below) Daniel Loxton claimed that Shermer was past that, on a comment to a skeptic friend's Facebook post about a month ago. That makes almost half of the group, four of ten, having some degree of question mark over their heads on conflating libertarianism and skepticism.

Now, that "partner" talk? With 10 different members, I say it's a legitimate analogy to compare SkepticBlog to a law firm, with each blogger a "partner" similar to those at a law firm.

And, based on my experience with a with a particular political blog, Daily Kos, we're going to take that analogy in a particular direction.

Back about four years ago, Armando Llorens-Sar was Kos founder Markos Moulitsas' right-hand man. But, many people including me, asked and kept asking why he was refusing to reveal the name of the law firm where he "worked." He claimed it was because it could hurt his business.

Not quite. It turned out he was a partner at the firm, as opposed to "working" there. It a corporate representational firm which had some clients, such as Clorox and Walmart, taboo to many liberals.

I noted on Kos, before being banned, that Armando could have sold out of his partnership or asked to be bought out and how he ignored this idea. Note that a similar analogy applies here, to getting rid of Shermer and Dunning, or else others starting a new group blog. The six "silent partners," or the six + two, if you count the "abetting" duo of Loxton and Novella, have their chance to stand up for skeptical credibility, principle and practice.

As it stands, though, this conflation is bad for skepticism in a number of ways. Credibility, confusion of what skepticism is and more all result.

Specifics?

Some people may thing that there's a litmus test on political skepticism, i.e., you're not a good enough skeptic unless you're a libertarian. Others may think that the skeptical enterprise has an inherent bias. (Note the explicit libertarianism of Pop Ev Psycher Steve Pinker, for a parallel.) And more.

Now, if like Howard Gardiner apparently did on religious belief to a degree, if Shermer and Dunning want to compartmentalize their skepticism, fine. Just be honest about it!

Libertarian pseudoskeptic pseudoscience

The potentially extended about dangers of mixing libertarianism and skepticism? Look at SkepticBlog and some of its recent posts, especially by Michael Shermer and Brian Dunning.

Shermer has been a libertarian of long standing. Outside this blog, as editor of Skeptic magazine, he's been an "enabler" of racialist Frank Miele for what, more than a decade now. Fellow racialist and co-author of "Race" with Miele, Vincent Sarich, is on the editorial board; Miele is listed as "senior editor."

Brian Dunning is currently engaged in bald-faced denialism of his libertarian sourcing, especially Steve Milloy's JunkScience.

Of course, here's why Dunning's such a denialist — Milloy's blatant denialism on global warming is trumpeted on the front page of JunkScience:

Now that the most absurd but potentially catastrophic junk science in human history is unraveling and we are preparing to declare victory over gorebull warbling we can devote more attention to neglected junk.

Taking Liberty -- How Private Property is being Abolished in America

Click here to jump straight to the global warming (a.k.a. "climate change", "global weirding", "people are icky, nasty, weather-breaking critters"... ) section if you so desire.

It's clear from that that Milloy engages in pseudoscience. Dunning was busted on using this website as a source, so hides his embarrassment at his ideological bias being discovered by raging against critics allegedly engaged in conspiracy theories, distortions, not telling him his errors and more.

Steven Novella originally got snookered by Milloy years ago and refusing to weigh in on Dunning's defense of "accidentally using" Milloy now.

Regarding that:

An irony in all of this is that if you go back and listen to early episodes of SGU, the Novella gang praised junkscience as a reputable website. They even had Milloy on to talk about his website (didn't discuss DDT, as far as I can remember). But you can tell that red flags were raised during the interview with Steve Novella, when Milloy was using language suggesting an ideological bias when discussing certain issues. And after that interview, SGU never mentioned junkscience again, except when criticizing it in an interview (I think, with Christopher Mooney). If only Brian had been privy to those early episodes, he may have steered away from the site all-together.

Well, considering that Dunning refuses to pull in his horns, AND that Novella has yet to put up his own post on Skepticblog about this at all, I doubt Dunning would have "steered away." Shermer hasn't steered away from worse; rather, he's gone swimming in it again.

Add, speaking of that, Skepticblog partner No. 4 (more on "partner" below) Daniel Loxton claimed that Shermer was past that, on a comment to a skeptic friend's Facebook post about a month ago. That makes almost half of the group, four of ten, having some degree of question mark over their heads on conflating libertarianism and skepticism.

Now, that "partner" talk? With 10 different members, I say it's a legitimate analogy to compare SkepticBlog to a law firm, with each blogger a "partner" similar to those at a law firm.

And, based on my experience with a with a particular political blog, Daily Kos, we're going to take that analogy in a particular direction.

Back about four years ago, Armando Llorens-Sar was Kos founder Markos Moulitsas' right-hand man. But, many people including me, asked and kept asking why he was refusing to reveal the name of the law firm where he "worked." He claimed it was because it could hurt his business.

Not quite. It turned out he was a partner at the firm, as opposed to "working" there. It a corporate representational firm which had some clients, such as Clorox and Walmart, taboo to many liberals.

I noted on Kos, before being banned, that Armando could have sold out of his partnership or asked to be bought out and how he ignored this idea. Note that a similar analogy applies here, to getting rid of Shermer and Dunning, or else others starting a new group blog. The six "silent partners," or the six + two, if you count the "abetting" duo of Loxton and Novella, have their chance to stand up for skeptical credibility, principle and practice.

As it stands, though, this conflation is bad for skepticism in a number of ways. Credibility, confusion of what skepticism is and more all result.

Specifics?

Some people may thing that there's a litmus test on political skepticism, i.e., you're not a good enough skeptic unless you're a libertarian. Others may think that the skeptical enterprise has an inherent bias. (Note the explicit libertarianism of Pop Ev Psycher Steve Pinker, for a parallel.) And more.

Now, if like Howard Gardiner apparently did on religious belief to a degree, if Shermer and Dunning want to compartmentalize their skepticism, fine. Just be honest about it!