Sunday, May 11, 2008

Little Green Footballs: Group-Think at Work

Charles Johnson just can't leave the evolutionist-heretics alone. At Little Green Footballs today he has a very poor poem by one of his readers (Winslow) called "Once Upon the Internet." In it the "poet" writes verses such as these:

And then, with logic so perverse it hurts to render it in verse, The charge was made that atheism is religious faith.

And even Orwell would be awed by language so profoundly flawed, For logically, religious faith is therefore non-belief.

To try to cast theology as natural philosophy Is clearly what Intelligent Designers have in mind.

Their documented strategy to wedge their way to victory Speaks volumes on the nature of Intelligent Design.

Charles is obviously offended by those who do not believe the theory of evolution is a proven fact, hence his daily arrows against them. A couple of days ago he linked to another dismissive post, this one on Zamblog by Zombie (whom I've praised several times in posts). Zombie was also highly critical of the evolutionist nay-sayers and gave a link to John Derbyshire's essay knocking Ben Stein's movie ("Expelled") on the subject. Derbyshire attacked the film as a piece of creationist "porn" and "a blood libel on our civilization." Zombie said he agreed with Derbyshire.

In the piece, however, Derbyshire admitted that he hadn't even seen the movie. His criticisms of it were merely what he imagined its content to be. Wow, what scholarship! This is similar to all those liberals at Amazon.com writing vicious reviews of conservative books that they've never read.

A better scholar, David Berlinski, also writing at National Review Online, takes Derbyshire to task and rips him a new one at this link.

The truth is, Charles Johson is no conservative, and neither are some of his slavish ass-kissers. They are dismissive of Christians and other religious folk, and assume, smugly and arrogantly, that their atheistic beliefs are "truth."

Group-Think is an ugly thing and it has always turned me off. It's even worse in an atmosphere of implied threat, i.e. that the host will ban you from his forum if you dare to disagree. LGF is one of these, where the Great Leader pontificates and his minions bow and scrape to support his prejudices and beliefs, lest they be summarily ostracized from the community. It's similar to what you might see at any college or university today -- the mindset is liberal and leftist, and the social ostracism, intimidation and poor grades reserved for the brave few who speak out against it. That's not for me. I think my days as a Lizard are over.
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As for Winslow's lame verse above, atheism is, in fact, a form of faith, just as theism is. Atheism is simply a kind of negative faith. One person looks at the cosmos and decides there must be a higher power and a higher purpose. He has a positive, optimistic kind of faith. Another looks at the cosmos and decides it must be a meaningless accident with no purpose whatsoever. He has a negative, pessimistic kind of faith.
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Whereas both observers have faith (i.e. belief that is not based on provable facts), the latter believes his faith is factual knowledge (or "science") and that he is very deep thinker and brainy sort. As a corollary, since he is so brainy and brilliant, the optimist observer must necessarily be superstitious and ignorant, and laughably so.

The truth is, the latter observer (the pessimist/atheist) is rather shallow. Sort of like Winslow and a plethora of other CJ butt-kissers at Little Green Footballs.
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