[I apologize for the long hiatus in posting. I have been preoccupied with other issues.]
I’ve been trying to figure out what I found so annoying about this gathering of atheists.
A couple of things I can identify right away. Cara Santa Maria has the worst case of vocal fry I have ever been assaulted with. You could serve up her voice with black pudding and field mushrooms. “Once considered a speech disorder,” says Science magazine. Once? She also, without any contextual or stylistic justification, lets loose a taboo word. That’s not to mention her face iron and tattoos. Is there a ranch somewhere breeding these types?
And then, the other panelists are all lefties. They are the very nicest kind of lefties, thoughtful and erudite ─ the kind you’d invite to a dinner party ─ and of course I don’t mind their scoffing at virgin births, golden tablets, and the rest (though why does the Ganesh Milk Miracle never get a mention in these discussions?) but how do they manage to foul the air with so much cool, damp smugness?
Sure, these people are a lot smarter than the average bear. Do they have to be quite so up-front about it, though? Rich people used to wear shabby clothes and have beaten-up furniture. There was much to be said for that.
And of course, the panelists are all Left Creationists. Their enthusiasm for evolution by natural selection stops dead around 100K years ago so far as Homo sap. is concerned. Why are they never called on this?
If you are baffled at why atheists are so disliked in the U.S.A., index your bafflement at 100. Then watch that video clip (it’s 45 minutes). The bafflement index, you’ll find, has dropped below 20.
Dear Bradlaugh !
Can you comment, what actually was discussed in that 45 minute “clip”?
You apparently have already spent those 45 minutes.
Your F.r.
LOL! Spending 45 minutes watching that video was … well what can I say! (Why did I just do this?) Why are so many atheists progressive liberals?
FWIW, Shermer describes himself as a libertarian, and is sometimes castigated in liberal skeptical circles for these views.
I get so sick and tired of the majority of atheists being far-left liberals, especially since so many of them are so irrational in their liberal views. They can’t defend their claims any more than the religious can.
Dear Florida resident:
The hostess and all three panelists are like-minded Left atheists. (I take libertarianism, in the spirit of old editorials in the Peking People’s Daily, to be a rightist deviation from the Left party line.)
So there are no arguments here about the existence of gods or the truth of the Bible. Most of the time is spent on them all agreeing that religious claims should be tested to the same empirical standards as other claims about reality; about the need for atheists to be more forthright & not take refuge behind compromise words like “agnostic”; and about the awfulness of Republican presidents & candidates being religious. Obama of course gets a pass on this last one, in spite of those decades of church attendance — one panelist actually referred to him affectionately as “Barry.” Is there anyone, anywhere who thinks that our President has a single religious bone in his body?
There was also some talk about the foundations of morality & the need to propagate the evol-psych explanation . . . without any of the panelists explaining how you get the fine points of evol-psych across to a public that is majority creationist. Perhaps we should try to get people understanding quantum mechanics first.
Yes, point taken on the evident smugness, although I’ll confess I didn’t have the patience to play through the whole thing. One reason I sometimes call myself an agnostic, when atheist would be more correct, is just to annoy people like this.
Mainly, though, I’m glad to see Bradlaugh back here. I didn’t think that Secular Right had pulled an NRO on him, but it’s good to get confirmation. It’s also interesting to find out that the curious quality in the voice of that young lady, which I’ve noticed in other young women as well, actually has a name. Mind you, it doesn’t bother me as much as it apparently does Derb, it’s more a matter of what those curious vocal stylings are actually being used to express.