Coronavirus, philosophy, the noble lie, and the real problem with Dr. Fauci (and his defenders)

The noble lie, of course, begins with Plato in The Republic. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on The Republic has more depth.

Its most destructive recent version has been in Straussian economics, and more broadly, Straussian neoconservativism.

That said, its latest proponent was Dr. Anthony Fauci. Only, unlike Plato or Straus, his noble lie was not deployed in the service of political leadership. It was more noble yet, but like all noble lies, both a lie and a lie whose attempt at nobility eventually backfired.

You don't have to go to wingnut websites to find that Fauci did, in the early days of coronavirus, say that masks don't work. Snopes, which in its attempt to go beyond skepticism to political fact-checking, has largely put its oar in the waters of the Democratic half of America's two duopoly parties, calls his claim "outdated." And, this is nothing but high-grade hypocrisy from Snopes.

There's three real options. Either he said it (as he did) and it's "true"; he didn't say it, and it's "false"; or it can't be determined and it's "unknown." NOT "outdated."

And, we know he said it.

Sadly, Snopes isn't the only defender of Fauci. (And, these defenders often have their own political tribalisms; BlueMAGA is as tribalist as MAGA). Snopes certainly does, and that's why, when it went beyond true/not true factchecking at the start of the Trump era, I delisted it. As for more on what those defenders are getting wrong, even in the science world, see this update at bottom.

Meanwhile, there's worse. Only four weeks ago, Business Insider reported that Fauci STILL STOOD BY telling the "noble lie."

Here's what he said:

"I don't regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for the health providers who are putting themselves in harm's way every day to take care of sick people," Fauci told O'Donnell.

NO, NO, NO.

This is just like Plato, or Straus ... or do I go Godwin's Law?

Doubling down on the original noble lie with a lie about it.

You tell the truth.

Like, maybe, saying something like this:

Dear America: We don't know how serious the novel coronavirus will be, but information from many places in the world shows this is indeed more serious than the flu. Unfortunately, we have a shortage of surgical masks at this time. Our national leaders are doing everything they can to address this. So, at this time, in weeks ahead, we are asking you to take an abundance of caution when venturing outdoors.

But Fauci's refusal to admit he was wrong makes the noble lie that "noble." When one doubles down on a lie like that, then it's really the "noble lie."

In addition? China was recommending masks even for people with low infection risk at the time Fauci said, "nahh."

Update, Aug. 23: There's also the fact that Zeynep Tufekci, on Twitter, was calling out Fauci et al AT THE TIME he made his original statements, per this NYT piece. Extracts from it are worth reading:

Public health officials seem to have had an ulterior motive when they told citizens that masks were useless: They were trying to stave off a run on protective gear that could have made it unavailable for the health care workers who needed it. Ms. Tufekci’s faith in human nature has led her to believe that the government should have trusted citizens enough to level with them, rather than jeopardize its credibility with recommendations it would later overturn. 

“They didn’t trust us to tell the truth on masks,” she said. “We think of society as this Hobbesian thing, as opposed to the reality where most people are very friendly, most people are prone to solidarity.”

There you go. As I note below, and did so in sending a link to this blog post in response to her Tweet, it's possible, even likely, that coronavirus denialists and conspiracy theorists would have found other things to fuel their bubble views. But, more fuel for the fire is never good. (And, in that sense, I'm less optimistic than she was in her original column for the NYT calling out Fauci et al.) And, a sidebar to her: Good luck at The Atlantic. If you really believe in Zapatista Solidarity, aren't you at the wrong spot?

And, saying that Fauci wasn't the only one saying "nahh"? Pointing to Surgeon General Jerome Adams and others? "Just following the herd" isn't THAT different at times from "just following orders."

In addition, a herd telling a noble lie makes it worse by amplification, which then can open the doors to fallacious appeals to authority. (As far as I know, Fauci, Adams and others have never had serious training in medical ethics, or larger sociological ethics, therefore, as opposed to actual medical science issues, an appeal to them on "no masks" would be fallacious.)

As for the damage?

It's quite likely coronavirus denialists and conspiracy theorists would have found other things to fuel their bubble views. But, more fuel for the fire is never good. And, Greg Ip says encouraging early mask wearing might have helped nuance lockdowns and other strategies more selectively, early in the "game." That said, per that WSJ link, we need to be careful about thinking that Sweden's numbers showed that herd immunity worked. Rather, Swedes may may have heard enough in the news about how bad things were in their country and started masking up, started having businesses require masks, etc. And, Ip's info from JP Morgan claiming Sweden's economy suffered less than its Nordic neighbors? Business Insider says that's simply untrue.

Sadly, this untruth is even percolating among people who should know better. "Orac" of his own nom de plume and now part of the gang at Science Based Medicine, made this claim, or at least left himself open to interpretation as making that claim, Nov. 16.

Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and others tried to emphasize responses to the pandemic based on the best public health science. …Messaging on masks early in the pandemic was borderline disastrous, such as when the main message being promoted was that people probably shouldn’t wear masks routinely unless they were sick. … Unlike Fauci, however, Trump refused to change his mind when evidence had by June become pretty definitive.

Sadder yet, this is a 2020 installation of what Orac has done at least one year in the past — a blog post about scientists trying to communicate science messaging to the general public within the American political world.

And, sadder, sadder yet, Orac ignores the February message out of China.

We'd all at least had a shot of being better off, and certainly couldn't have been worse off, both on getting a clear masking message early on AND a clear seriousness message early on, if Fauci had just said: "Masks help prevent the spread of coronavirus. We aren't sure how much they help, but we know they help. Right now, they're most needed by our medical personnel, but any substitute for them is better than nothing," we'd all be well off. After all, Gizmodo ran its DIY masks piece April 6, and notes it was just a week after the CDC issued a masks call.

And, Tufecki's Tweet? MARCH FIRST.

=

Update: Fauci has since this time admitted engaging in a SECOND noble lie, this one over the percentage of Americans who need either vaccination or previous contraction of the disease to provide "herd immunity."

Let's also not forget that, even as other medical experts, and emerging sociological experts like Tufekci, said otherwise, Fauci in March 2020 also DID utter "just the flu" statements.

Was Fauci better than Trump? Yes. My left butt cheek is better than Trump. But, #BlueAnon / #BlueMAGA tribalism, including that of Snopes, can't hide the facts.

Update 2, June 1, 2021: Fauci's now been busted, under emails obtained by BuzzFeed in an FOIA request, of having spread his original Noble Lie about masks privately already in late February of 2020. Sadly, BuzzFeed engaged in its own tribalism by which emails it chose to focus on for its story, promoting Fauci hagiography rather than his lies about masks — or his hints that, just maybe, the virus DID come from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

If Fauci had any integrity, as well as political responsibility, he'd at least resign as Biden's special medical advisor at a minimum. At a maximum, he'd also step down from NSAID as well. And, BuzzFeed, if it had any sense of journalistic ethics, would do a second story. Somehow, I don't think either one would happen.

Update 3, July 1, 2021: Jared Yates Sexton, reflecting on the death of Donald Rumsfeld, reminds us of the deadliness of the Platonic Noble Lie.

The trifecta: Private Platonic noble lies from Fauci

I blogged almost a year ago about Dr. Anthony Fauci's Platonic Noble Lie about mask-wearing.

I then followed that up, tackling Platonic Noble Lie No. 2 about herd immunity.

Turns out those were just the tip of an iceberg.

Fauci's now been busted, under emails obtained by BuzzFeed in an FOIA request, of having spread his original Noble Lie about masks privately already in late February of 2020.

Sadly, BuzzFeed engaged in its own tribalism by which emails it chose to focus on for its story, promoting Fauci hagiography rather than his lies about masks — or his hints that, just maybe, the virus DID come from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And, maybe it did, if we can get past that being given a "gain in research" (I see what I did) by Trump Trainers who are engaging in their own twosiderism.

But, the goods are there:

If Fauci had any integrity, as well as political responsibility, he'd at least resign as Biden's special medical advisor at a minimum. At a maximum, he'd also step down from NIAID as well. And, BuzzFeed, if it had any sense of journalistic ethics, would do a second story. Somehow, I don't think either one would happen.

Fauci is long past his best-by date, and contra BuzzFeed, does appear to have partially relished his role of the last year.

If "BlueAnon" had integrity and moved beyond twosiderism, it would admit that Fauci has screwed the pooch before. Sadly, it won't. As noted above, with masks, it's not that he had different statements in public and in private, it's that he was WRONG, and demonstrably wrong at the time he spoke, in both public and in private. 

In other words, he was telling the Platonic Noble Lie behind the scenes, too. And, unless his friends are awfully tribalist, or believers that they're the Platonic philosopher-scientists (which some of them, like Fauci, may have self-anointed themselves as being), they should be pissed.

And, looking again, I see Jason Leopold was the primary reporter on this. He knows better.

American Humanists blow St. Anthony of Fauci an air-kiss

The American Humanist Association has named Fauci its Humanist of the Year. That's St. Anthony of Fauci the teller of Platonic lies. And, of further Platonic lies after that. And, not even a Platonic lie, just a National Institutes of Health definitional hair-splitting lie, about gain of function work at WIV.

In reality? Zeynep Tufekci, one of the first people to call out Fauci's original lie on masks, and to since then explicitly call out tribalism and also say the lab-leak hypothesis should be taken more seriously than BlueAnon will take it, is MUCH more deserving.

Humanism, especially good secular humanism, should be about honesty and integrity, among other things. Fauci lacks honesty and he lacks the integrity to admit these Platonic lies, too.

In addition to BlueAnon tribalism, I suspect that AHA sees this as a fundraising cash cow, more disgusting yet. Given the mix of gushing and wagon-circling at places like Tippling Philosopher, sadly, they're likely right.

I was worried about having nothing for this blog this week. Sadly, that's been solved.

And, beyond the disgust at Fauci, I'm not joking about Tufekci, whom I've "anointed" as a public intellectual, as being a better choice,

That said, I can list several previous recipients that underwhelm me as well. Some underwhelm a lot; some underwhelm moderately. They include:

• Rebecca Goldstein (crappy author, philosopher and critical theologian)
• Bill Nye (attention whore)
• P.Z. Myers (need I say more?)
• Steve Pinker (Ev Psych whore, crappy author, hasn't read his own book on writing thoroughly, let alone taught it to wife Goldstein)

The moderate underwhelmers include

• Jennifer Ouellette
• Jared Diamond

Platonic Noble Lie No. 2 from Fauci

I blogged this summer about Anthony Fauci's Platonic Noble Lie from the spring about how Americans didn't need to wear masks and worse, how he doubled down on it for motivated reasoning or whatever this summer.

Now he's at it again.

Fauci has admitted that 70 percent immunity is way too low for herd immunity on coronavirus, that the country needs at least 80 percent, maybe 90 percent.

Dr. Fauci said that weeks ago, he had hesitated to publicly raise his estimate because many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines, which they would need to accept almost universally in order for the country to achieve herd immunity.

Now that some polls are showing that many more Americans are ready, even eager, for vaccines, he said he felt he could deliver the tough message that the return to normal might take longer than anticipated.

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

Problem? His claim that this will make Americans more vaccine-desirous could backfire. One could easily argue the opposite side of the equation.

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.

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 2022

An annual roundup of the most read blog posts of the past year. 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, "No true empiricist? Like no true Scotsman?" from this past year, was a takedown of British philosopher Julian Baggini, whether Scottish or not, over his alleged, but not actual, taking to task of Scottish philosopher David Hume over Hume's racism.

No. 6 is another oldie but goodie, "Say goodbye to History for Atheists." Note to Tim O'Neill: David Kertzer's newest book is yet more reason O'Neill needs to STFU on his attempts to defend the papacy against anti-semitism.

No. 7, "Did Biblical Edom exist? ...", from this past year, talked about the latest in biblical archaeology, and the latest in Israeli biblical archaeology, and the Zionism that appears to be behind some of that, and the Zionism that appears to be behind some of the reporting about it, as the ellipsis points lead you to read the full thing.

No. 8: "Coronavirus, philosophy, the noble lie, and the problem with Dr. Fauci (and his defenders)," written in the middle of 2020, and updated more than once, is indeed about "St. Anthony of Fauci," as I've taken to calling him, and his largely "Blue Anon" defenders, in the face of the big Platonic noble lie he told about masks early in the pandemic (and various less Platonic and less noble likes after that).

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, "The great ahistoricity of Acts and radical thoughts about Paul's demise," is the third on this list from the past year and is exactly what its title says.

Top blogging of 2020

Rankings are as of Sunday, Jan. 3. As I normally post once a week, and never more than twice a week, as this is not my primary blog, and I've already got material lined up for here, I pushed this back a couple of weeks. Not all are from this past year; they're simply the most popular of that time.

No. 1? People like to talk about the Antichrist and his/its "mark of the beast." Problem: Revelation never uses the word "Antichrist." Nor does it talk about "the man of lawlessness." So what's the diff between them, if any? I explored that in December 2019, just in time for Christmas then.

No. 2? Plato, meet Dr. Anthony Fauci. The hero of "The Resistance" in trying to keep federal government discussion of coronavirus control science-based, Fauci told a Platonic noble lie last March about not wearing masks, then doubled down on the alleged necessity of that last summer. I took him to the ethics woodshed and gave him a huge spanking. (He has since admitted engaging in a SECOND noble lie, this one over the percentage of Americans who need either vaccination or previous contraction of the disease to provide "herd immunity.")

No. 3? Sharon Hill in late 2018 said she was no longer a Skeptics™ card carrier. But, she didn't repent of her previous Brian Dunning fangrrlism. I tackled all of that.

No. 4? Speaking of Brian Dunning, this 2010 post, originally untitled, somehow went viral early last year and I eventually titled it as "Libertarian pseudoskeptical pseudoscience." Brian Dunning, the gift that never stops giving.

No. 5? Hobby Lobby-connected Museum of the Bible officially admitted last year it had bought a peck of forged Dead Sea Scrolls. Left to clean up the mess? Old seminary classmate of mine Jeff Kloha; I blogged about the work he faces, the possible pressures to play along with Hobby Lobby on some things, his wrongness on some exegetical and text-critical statements related to the DSS, and more. Read away.

No. 6? What do GIFs have to do with David Hume? More than you might think, as I discussed here last year.

No. 7? Beware the Ides of March and Indo-European cognates! This was a fun one to write, talking about Caesar as would-be rex, the German Reich and more.

No. 8? More problems for reincarnationists. I'm not a Gnu Atheist, but things that catch my eye that slap down either Western or Eastern religions on fundamental issues will start me to blogging. This one had two parts. First, per Thomas Nagel's famous piece, how could a reincarnated human soul, if it moved a ways "downward," map onto a bat? Second, what's with this idea of "progress" in reincarnation in general, and how its devotees define when a new life is progress and when it is regress?

No. 9? Me comparing my path with that of another Lutheran become atheist, Ed Suominen. An old one from 2013, updated last year.

No. 10? Inspired in part by two Jewish philosophers, the well-known Walter Kaufmann and online correspondent Dan Kaufman, I took their thought — and that of many others — of claiming that Christianity is all about orthodoxy while other religions, and above all, Judaism, are all about orthopraxis, to stern task. Just ain't so, I said.

Top blogging for the third quarter of 2023

As with my main blog, where I do a monthly top 10, not all of these are from the last three months. I'll note there they are not. And most, in fact, are not.

No 10 is from 2021, about Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod President Matt Harrison's underhanded closure of Concordia University Portland.

No. 9 is from recently, though: it's about a high-grift tour of the US of the fraudulent, bogus, bullshit "James Ossuary." Actually, the tour is only here in Tex-ass right now.

No. 8? My 2019 review of Lyndal Roper's Luther bio. (It is near Reformation Day, where conservative Lutherans turn into pumpkins if they see a shadow of Luther legend refuted.)

Speaking of? At No. 7, my 2017 roundup of Luther legend.

If an underhanded closure of a university wasn't enough, at No. 6 Matty Harrison earlier this year had to worry about one of his ministers being among Fani Willis' Dirty 19.

At No. 5? I take down "The Smart Fool," one of the overly self-inflated commenters at the r/AcademicBiblical subreddit.

At No. 4? An oldie but a goodie from 2020, getting new traction because I posted it for Democratic tribalists on r/politics. That's about St. Anthony of Fauci's various Platonic noble, then more ignoble, lies about COVID.

No. 3? Even older, but, it's never too late to keep kicking and saying good-bye to Tim O'Neill, the papal apologist of History for Atheists.

No. 2? From this quarter, more wrongness at r/AcademicBiblical, namely "The Woman Taken in Adultery" pericope of John 7:53-8:11.

Drumroll .....

And No. 1? Anal-retentive backdoor liars at r/religion.

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 January-March

 Unlike at my primary blog, I don't post here enough to do a roundup of top blogging, by readership, monthly.

Quarterly, though, yes.

So, let's dive in. (Note: Not all blog posts may be from the last three months; these are just the most popular.)

"'No true empiricist' ... like 'no true Scotsman'?" — my callout of Julian Baggini over David Hume, was No. 1.

No. 2? "Only Sky is getting shit wrong already." The successor to the atheist and agnostic bloggers of Patheos did little to impress me in the first month of its formation.

No. 3? I noted how the Westar Institute, the successor to the Jesus Seminar, had taken itself totally in academic and intellectual tank in a new book.

No. 4? "Baruch Espinoza remains excommunicated." No, really, he DOES, at the Amsterdam synagogue that tossed him centuries ago.

No. 5? More on the hypocrisy of Hume, this time as a psychologist.

No. 6? I had to laugh at the claim that in our minds, we don't think in any language. As it turns out? The piece had plenty to laugh at.

No. 7? From last year, my refutation of Jesus mythicists' claims that Nazarath didn't exist in the first century CE still trends.

No. 8? An old post about old libertarian pseudoskeptics like Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer will never get old.

No. 9? I remain glad I said goodbye to History for Atheists and its Catholic and papal apologist pseudo-atheist author.

No. 10? My callout of St. Anthony of Fauci for his Platonic noble lies (I later had follow-ups) remains popular.

Museum of the Bible's Auguean stables:Have fun on cleanup, old classmate Jeff Kloha

I blogged a few months ago about the breaking of the Dead Sea Scrolls scandal at Hobby Lobby-owned Museum of the Bible, and how the man dealing with the fallout is old seminary classmate Jeff Kloha, who now prefers the full Jeffrey.

Update, July 27, 2021: The Gilgamesh Dream Tablet has Hobby Lobby back in the news. See my update at the bottom of the piece, including noting that Hobby Lobby is far from the only villain in the drama.)

Said blogging included disagreements between this now-secularist myself and the still-fundamentalist wing of Lutheranism Kloha about whether or not the DSS confirm a pristine transmission of the text of the Old Testament or Tanakh (they don't, Jeff) and whether or not they're "inarguably" the most important biblical discovery of the last century (they're arguably not, and if we focus on Christian development and diversity, Nag Hammadi is arguably MORE important).

But I digress.

NPR has a new piece about all the cleanup work that Kloha, the museum's chief curator, has on his hands.

He said it's looking at returning a bunch of items to Iraq, some of which likely came from its national musuem. That said, he doesn't know for sure:

"All we have is paperwork, and very vague paperwork," says Kloha, a former professor of the New Testament at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. "Obviously, there are multiple sources for items from Iraq over the past 30 years. So we have no way of knowing where these came from." 

Part one of the fun.

Part two? The Green family bought 5-10 percent fakes among the 8,000 items up for return. Schadenfreude is a bitch.

Part three? Items it has already promised to return are still in the U.S., because the Greens are too cheap to pay insurance. They're hoping to send them back on an Iraqi embassy plane.

Part four? Schadenfreude can spread wide, like diarrhea. Christie's sold a Gilgamesh to the Museum of the Bible, and didn't adequately check provenance. An Afghani Jewish prayer book was likely trafficked by the Taliban.

Kloha told NPR the "few bad apples" story.

"It seems to have been just one or two individuals who were acting as agents and purchasing things for what was, at that point, just the idea of a museum," he says. "It was a handful of advisers who would literally travel the world, make contacts, find things, and then bring them to the Greens for acquisition."

 Not quite, sir.

Part five? Schadenfreude sometimes degenerates into fuck-you privilege. Steve Green, Hobby Lobby patriarch, was flagged by Customs in 2010 for importing an ancient manuscript Bible without documentation. Read the story for details.

And, per this site, let us not forget the Green family's dirty hands on Dirk Obbink's apparent papyrus stealing.

I don't think Jeff is lying. But, it sounds like he needs to get more up to speed on the Green family.

===

Update, July 27, 2021: With the DOJ getting a court ruling today that Hobby Lobby must forfeit the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, sounds like Jeff Kloha has more Cleanup on Aisle 6 to do. Details? The tablet was shipped to the US in 2003 by Jordanian Antiquities Authority, without proper paperwork but with the claim it was found in miscellaneous rubble in 1981. In reality, like much other stuff the Green family got its mitts on, it was apparently looted from Iraq. There is no honor among thieves, and we'll see how much remorse there is.

Now, some of this is not new, and some of this on the political side is a #BlueAnon dogpile on the Green family. Hobby Lobby surrendered it a nearly a year ago, after federal authorities ruled to that end. Let's ALSO note that Hobby Lobby supports its return to Iraq. The actual court ruling is more icing on the cake than anything, though it gives the feds leverage if there's anything Hobby Lobby tries to keep its hands on.

In fact, it's arguable that Christie's (yes, THAT Christie's) is at least as big a villain as Hobby Lobby.

Christie's, the international auction house from which Hobby Lobby bought the item, previously told CNN that "any suggestion that Christie's had knowledge of the original fraud or illegal importation is unsubstantiated."

Christie's can use the weasel word "unsubstantiated" all it wants. And, yes, "weasel word" it is.

Re Hobby Lobby, Christie's and looted Iraq, there may be plenty of people who aren't hard-right conservative Christians who willingly bought larger or smaller sums of ill-gotten booty pilfered from Iraq, and some of it may have sifted through Christie's hands.

Related to that? I want to hear NOTHING from American do-gooders claiming we should hold on to it because ISIS will just destroy it. First, that would be yet another form of thievery. Second, that's why much of the rest of the world hates American do-gooders. Third, destruction of antiquities has been happening since the rise of civilization. Fourth, Christians have done this in hte past. The Iconoclastic Controversy. Worshipers, led by ex-priest pastors such as Karlstadt, shattering stained glass in the early Reformation. Some "Mark of the Beast" types (generally ignorant) destroying things related to that alleged mark today.

So, the idea, from one apparent BlueAnon do-gooder on Twitter, that it would have been better had it been stolen on the QT, is laughable.

No, really! The "HL" in his Tweet, part of a thread from a now-muted person, goes exactly down that rabbit hole. 

C. Is the same point I'm making. For one, DOJ wouldnt know about it if HL didnt declare it. It could've easily ended up in the hands of a private collector that kept it secret.

— Edward Davis (@Mag_neto_) July 28, 2021

Besides, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? That's true on everything from antiquities to importing exotic plants and animals to a new country or continent. I tweeted back to the guy exactly on that line:

So, now you're advocating that thievery is fine as long as it's on the QT? Gee, that's what organized crime says. Keep extending the rope to further hang yourself.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 28, 2021

Twitter's non-literalists claimed that the words above were inciting self-harm and locked my account until I deleted that. I of course did a screenshot.

And yes, IMO, that's what it boils down to. I thought of Juvenal's maxim shortly after that. And, see what I said above about Christie's. They may have sold Iraq antiquities to other buyers who made exactly that argument. Or, Christie's senior staff, with their attempt at plausible deniability, may have internally made that argument themselves, that selling these items got them out of Iraq.

No, per the Wiki link, the phrase doesn't come from Plato's "Republic," though the idea behind it is raised indirectly. Plato's answer on how to guard them? The heart of the fascism behind the "Republic" — mind control through the Platonic Noble Lie. No thanks, as I've said about St. Anthony of Fauci, on masks and herd immunity. I don't even consider his "gain of function" a Platonic noble lie. More like a Jesuitical one, or just a plain old grubby one.

As for the value of Gilgamesh? It's at least partly behind the tales of Moses' birth and similar birth stories around the ancient Near East, as well as some documents from Qumran (which tie back to Hobby Lobby's larceniousness as well as to why Kloha was hired) and to the Iliad and Odyssey. Arguably, it's connected indirectly to just about any later epic tale in the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean.

 

Update, Nov. 26, 2024: I don't know whether he left on his own, or got kicked to the curb, but Kloha is no longer at the Museum of the Bible, per his LinkedIn. In a post, he says it was his decision, but, nonetheless, that could be a decision that was constrained or nudged in some way. Per this post from his new freelance life? It's interesting. Maybe he's less argumentative than in the past. That said, does his enlightenment about political discourse also apply to political discourse?

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.