Don’t mess with people’s cherished beliefs—at least if those beliefs aren’t ickily religious in nature.
Richard Lindzen, a professor at MIT, is a prominent global-warming skeptic. He has paid the ultimate price for daring to speak truth to power.
A Boston-area art appraiser refused to value an oriental rug for him.
Lindzen explains:
In our recent house fire, an 18th century oriental rug was burnt, and we needed an appraisal of its value for our insurance. We were referred to a dealer, [name withheld], who agreed to do the appraisal. However, when my wife, Nadine, brought him the burnt rug, he rudely turned her away saying that he had sent me an email explaining his position.
Here’s the appraiser’s e-mail:
I am sorry to inform you that after some consideration, I’ve decided not to perform the appraisal service that you’ve requested. Your writing on the subject of global warming is offensive to me personally, and I feel that I would have difficulty being an impartial appraiser of value given my view on the subject.
It could have been worse. Last year I wrote a post strongly criticizing PZ Myers for stealing and desecrating a consecrated Eucharist. The trouble is, Myers is an atheist, and you don’t mess with atheists’ beliefs and come out unscathed.
Months and months later, I was still getting comments on the post, like these that showed up this Easter:
The only bigots I see are people like Mike Kriskey.
One can feel the hatred pouring from these believers in supernatural fantasies.
Why is it always those who are supposed to be christian are the ones slinging hatred and lies and threats – I guess religion teaches that evil.
Believe whatever crap your deluded fantasies spew into your vacuous worldview – but keep out of where real, sane humans discuss issues and you won’t look like the bigoted fools that you are.
Religion deserves to be held up to ridicule and demands for proof until these cancers on society are totally eradicated. History has proven time and again that religiots and the dogma they bleat is the most deadly, dangerous and destructive force on earth.
To anyone that thinks that the certainty there is no god can be countered by polite arguments and scriptural quotes – go f*** yourselves.
That was my best Easter ever! (Not kidding.)
(h/t Mark Steyn at The Corner)
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Mike Kriskey, Do NOT tell me you didn’t hit back!!!
Interesting, he makes hate-filled rants about Christians and those who respond are bigots.
The Times We Live In!!!
Again, tell me you hit back.
Nope. I didn’t see the need to. I just left their (unexpurgated) comments there to show what kind of people flock to defend PZ Myers.
(The people on my side come off very well in comparison.)
The funny thing is, Atheism itself is a religion. It is a religion of a Non-God or even an Anti-God. The adherents to this religion can behave just as sanctimonious, self-righteous and obnoxious as the most over-devout Christian or Muslim.
Actually, I’m all for the appraiser’s right to turn down the job. Christians should also have the right to refuse service to people who offend them–for instance, a wedding photographer should have the right to turn down a job making memories at a “gay” wedding.
Unfortunately, in our country, sauce for the goose isn’t necessarily sauce for the gander.
I am too, Lars. I just think it’s a funny issue to plant one’s flag on.
I just think it’s a funny issue to plant one’s flag on.
I always figure that if you find a person who is a bigot that they don’t fixate on one issue, but have a whole range of nastiness they are just waiting to unleash. Especially the New Age self-righteous bigots, who always has a glib duplicitous explanation that they use to hide behind, as if they know what they are. I prefer the old-fashioned “Good ‘ol boy” type bigots, because at least they were proud of and oblivious to their hate.
I think that may be true. The “old” bigots, in my experience, had no personal animosity to individuals in the groups they disliked, and often got along well with them when circumstances threw them together. The “new bigots” genuinely hate their opponents, both as individuals and as a group.
Or so it seems to me.
That’s an excellent point, Lars. Of the very few people I know that I would even consider bigoted—all older folks—they seem to make exceptions for every single person they’ve ever met.
“Normally, X’s are Y. But not this guy, he’s okay.”
And that happens every time they meet an “X!” (But the exception proves the rule, you see.)
Malcolm X always said he preferred Southerners because while they hated Black “people” they tended to treat Black “persons’” better. Northerners loved Black “people” yet still discriminated against Black “persons”.
I have a great Uncle who lives in Oklahoma and will drop the “n-word” like we breathe. He voted for JC Watts for Congress every time he ran for office and thinks he’s one of the greatest congressmen OK has ever had. JC Watts is Black. Obviously “words” do not necessarily = “hate”. My relative doesn’t hate Watts and doesn’t really even disrespect him since he’s repeatedly put Watts (back in the 1990s anyway) in a position of authority over him.
I think the movie Gran Torino shows it perfectly. Everyone has prejudices — EVERYONE. We overcome them based on new information from individuals that buck the prejudice and proceed accordingly. While I believe we’re Fallen, I also believe most people are of good will and will treat individuals pretty well regardless of prejudices. A racist doesn’t merely hold bad feelings and ideas of others based on race. A racist ACTS — usually against an individual based on those general feelings.
So, what you are saying is that everyone is a little bit racist sometimes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbwNSNLPIfw
Gah. This bugs me a lot. I’ve had to put up with some of this. You wouldn’t expect I’d have to, since I like to ask a lot of questions and point out different ways of looking at things, and everyone on the left always claims to be “Free Thinkers,” but in fact, no, no, they’re just as sadly locked in to their traditional frameworks of thought as everyone else. Maybe moreso.
The thing that everyone on the left likes to ignore is that *everyone* is religious. Michael Chrichton is pretty clear on this – we’re neurologiclally hard wired to have a religion. If it’s not a traditional establishment God-and-Worship Support Structure, then we’ll find something else to fill the gap. It can be militant atheism, it can be evangelical environmentalism (Which Chrichton himself refered to as “The emerging religion of choice among urban atheist professionals”), it can take the form of cultural superiority a’la French Anglophobia, or even an insanely cultish dedication to a TV show (Star Trek, obviously) or a crazy dedication to Communism or the Demokratik Partei uber Alles. In fact, it can even take the form of an over-strident form of Repubicanism – though in my experience this happens less often because most Republicans already *have* a God somewhere, and don’t need to invent a new one out of whole cloth.
Bottom line: The left is just as likely to be biggoted, intolerant, and fundamentalist as the right is, and they’re less likely to notice it. In fact, since the left generally lacks a traditional religious framework in which to use our ‘God Instincts’ for constructive purposes, they’re probably somewhat *more* likely to become fundamentalists than folks on the right.
The left, in general, have the same or more faults than most. The main point of differentiation comes in the denial of those faults. Christians and most conservatives will “own” their faults and attempt to better themselves by not repeating those things which are faulty in their lives and by not pointing the finger at others. i.e.: “Don’t judge your brother for the speck in his eye till you remove the beam that is in your own eye.”
There is no such person as a “godless” one. Everyone has a “god” of some sort or another. I’m reminded of a cartoon I once saw that showed an atheist getting to the pearly gates. When asked if he believed in God, the atheist replied that he did not. The heavenly person in charge of the gates replied in kind to the atheist, “And therefore God does not believe in you,” and wham…. into hell went the atheist. There will come a time for the atheists and unbelievers to try to explain to God why they didn’t believe, when proof of the existence of God is all around us.
It’s kind of a logical challenge, and modern people have trouble with logic.
They figure, “I believe in broadmindedness and toleration. That’s my core value. That’s what I’m all about. Therefore, nothing I do or say could possibly be narrowminded or intolerant. It would be an oxymoron.”
What they don’t understand is that calling yourself “tolerant” isn’t actually the same thing as *being* tolerant.
Lars… they’re like nominal Christians. If I go to church and call myself “Born again” then I am — even if nothing in my life reflects the core values to which I claim to adhere.
Well, really, it’s not just *modern* people that have problems with logic. It’s a longstanding problem, a skill that requires some dedication and practice to exercise, so it’s not surprising that most people never really develop that particular mental muscle.
There’s a scene in Catch 22 that I love: Yosarian is in bed with this girl, and he says he doesn’t believe in God. The girl says “Yeah, me too.” Then Yosarian goes on about it, “How can there be a God with all the pain and suffering and war and dying kids in the world? What kind of sense does that make?” The girl starts crying, so he says, “What are you blubbering about, you idiot?” “You don’t believe in God,” she says. “Yeah, but you just said you don’t believe in God either.”
“Yeah, but the God that you don’t believe in is vicious and cruel;” she says, “The God *I* don’t believe in is kind, and loving!”
Cracks me up every time.
Excellent example. I’d forgotten about that scene in Catch 22.
My father was born Boston Irish Catholic. Anyone not so born, he looked upon as less than worthy (which brings up the interesting question concerning how he viewed his children since we were born in NJ). Anyway, he was a bigot in that regard, but the upshot was that he treated everyone pretty much the same. He owned a small trucking company in Newark NJ in the 50s. I remember him taking me with him to work. I was young, under 5 or 6 and I played with the other children of the drivers, Puerto Rican, Black, Jewish, Portuguese. He never gave the slightest hint that I shouldn’t. In my memory he never expressed contempt or hatred for anyone different from him, and he certainly never acted with such disdain and expressive hatred as do the left leaning poseurs today. I would argue that he probably spent more time with people of different classes, backgrounds and races than do the left poseurs today. So, my point is that you may call someone a bigot, and it may be true, but they may also never act upon those inner prejudices because they were brought up properly and taught to treat people in a courteous manner until they don’t deserve to be so treated.
That about sums it up, Kevin. And the people I was referring to as “bigots” are just as you describe. I wonder how much mass media changed Americans for the better in this regard. I’ll bet when your father was a child, he had little or no exposure to anyone who was different, and to a child different = dangerous.
There’s something a Southern friend (Who wasn’t a bigot, but was continually accused of being one) told me once. It had a bit of a slogan quality to it, so I’m pretty sure he didn’t think it up, and it’s probably not strictly speaking true, but it always stuck in my mind:
“Politicians love black people as a group, but hate them as individuals; southerners hate them as a group, but love them as individuals.”
See my Malcolm X quote above Repub… he basically said the same thing in his autobiography. It’s very Stalinist… one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Collectivism is chilling.
Mike: With regard to my father, he went to college at LSU in the 30s. LSU at that time was a gentleman’s finishing school. His father died and so he missed his last year, came home, found a job, got married, and joined the Army in 1942. He landed in North Africa, fought across North Africa, landed in Sicily, fought to Palermo. Landed 9 days after D-Day, fought through the hedgerows, broke out with Patton’s Army and raced across France to the German frontier. Was in the column that fought through to Bastogne, later found the bridge over the Rhine at Remagen (I have photos of the bridge still standing before German artillery brought it down). He was at Dachau when it was liberated. He told us the story of the soldiers going into Dachau, shooting the stupid SS who remained, taking a look around and then driving back out to the town and bringing the German town folk back at gun point and making them clean the place and look at what they had done. He came home in 1946.
While I have no idea if as a child he ever had exposure to people who were different, at no time growing up did he ever teach me to hate those who are different. In my own life I have been a card carrying member of the left. I spent three months in a military prison for protesting the war while a member of the military, this after coming back from an Asian tour. And while I was in that frame of mind I met many of the revered left. They were all, to a person, self absorbed and in it for their own promotion. I stayed with people who were defendants in the Harrisburg trial of the Berrigans. I still remember the kitchen table discussions concerning how they could best manipulate the press (the press back then were somewhat different than today, they were jaded and world weary and wise. They actually questioned everyone’s motives). It was then that I broke with the left and saw them for they were. But it was a few months later, while on Christmas leave from the base that I traveled back to NJ to see a left friend of mine. I traveled north with a friend of mine who couldn’t go home to New Mexico. He was half Hispanic, half Pueblo. We arrived at a NJ Parkway exit and waited for my friend. When he showed up, he took 10 seconds to pull me aside and tell me I was welcome but not the spic. I told him there was no way I was leaving a buddy by the side of a friendless road in the dead of night. He drove off. We found someone else in NYC to take us in. That was the last time I ever had any truck with the left.
Oh and by the way…it’s probably a good idea to tell small children that strangers are dangerous.
Kevin– I think I may have been unclear in what I said earlier. It was in no way meant to insult your father. I was thinking in generalities about his generation and wondering if the rise in something like televised sports showing minorities to kids might have had an impact on later generations.
Your “conversion” story sounds familiar. A lot of good, decent leftists had their eyes opened around the same time as you did. David Horowitz springs to mind, but there are many others.
Mike: No harm, I didn’t take it as an insult. I just responded to the idea that he hadn’t been exposed to the “Other” (to put it in good PC babblespeak). But it makes me remember that back then people did not necessarily live in the hermetic enclaves that they do today. I grew up Irish Catholic in a Jewish neighborhood…you want to talk about guilt? I can give you chapter and verse!
From both Testaments, yet!
…and even if someone grows up ‘unexposed’ to different races in a monolithic culture, *most* people have the ability to adapt their views. For instance, my dad grew up in an all-white neighborhood during WWII. He was taught – as was everyone – to fear and hate the Japanese as pointy-toothed blood-drinking, demonic savages who ate babies. (Look at some propaganda posters from the time, you’ll see where he got these ideas from). He spent the first half of the 50s in Japan, sent there by the military and utterly terrified because of all the horror stories drilled in to him as a kid. If there was anyone who should have been biggoted, it was my dad…
…and within about a week, he discovered that he really, really liked the Japanese, they weren’t frightening at all, they were friendly, outgoing, not really hard to understand, and kind of attractive as well, not demonic at all.
Granted, some people lack the mental faculties to change their minds when faced with new information, but I have to believe that *most* people, no matter how restrictive thier upbringing, can just go “oh, ok, they’re not subhuman monsters” and move on.
I never quite got why *The Left* refuses to accept that notion. “Oh, people from Indianna will always be screaming racists.”
First Things has a Father’s Day article up today that talks about the exact thing we’ve been discussing here:
When I first started work on the railroad, we were a pretty diverse group. Everyone had a label. No one was exempt. Since I was German I was the “squarehead.” A French friend was called “frog,” a black man was called “spearchucker,” Italians were “waps,”, etc. and down the line. Everybody had a nickname. No one was offended unless you called him/her by their real name. If someone needed help, everybody chipped in. We all went for beer after work, no matter the race. We wore the labels of our nicknames with pride.
One of my best friends growing up was Jamaican. Just to annoy people, he used to call me the N-word, and I used to call him “Whitey devil.” Ah, what fun.