Author: Ophelia Benson

I didn’t know there was a myth that Oliver North told the Iran-Contra investigation and in particular Al Gore (!) that the reason he had such a pricey security system was because he was afraid of “the most evil man in the world” and that that man was Osama bin Laden.

(Actually maybe I did know it, once upon a time. It sounds very faintly familiar now – I may have caught a whiff or a glimpse of it at some point. But if so, the knowledge didn’t stick.)

I was told it yesterday. I was driving an acquaintance back from the airport, and he told me it. He told me it as something he saw – he saw Al Gore questioning Oliver North, and he saw Oliver North tell Al Gore that.

Wait, what? I said. Are you sure? That can’t be right. That was in the 80s – bin Laden was a mujahid then. He was an anti-CommOnist, just Olly North’s kind of guy. (I forebore to point out that Al Gore wasn’t on the Iran-Contra committee, because I’m a kind and loving person.)

My acquaintance all but laughed. He knew absolutely that it was right; he remembered very clearly watching it. There was no possibility of error whatsoever.

You know…I’m not used to people like that. I don’t get out much, so I don’t meet them. I’m not used to people who are so stupid that they think their memories are infallible. That level of certainty combined with cluelessness kind of startles me. (It also profoundly bores me, but that’s another story.)

I wasn’t having it though. He’d been talking non-stop since the instant he got in the car, lecturing on this and then on that, not even paying attention to whether I was interested or not, so I wasn’t having it. I kept pointing out that it was in the 80s, bin Laden was on Reagan’s side, what he was saying made no sense. Once I mentioned the dates for about the sixth time, his certainty wobbled a little, so then he started to lecture about something else.

My friend Claire looked it up on Snopes for me, so now I know it’s not just some fantasy my acquaintance made up from scratch, it’s an existing myth, that went flying around the internet in 2001. He’s a sucker for things that go flying around the internet, and emails them to everyone in his address book, which unfortunately includes me. He got it from some stupid mailing or other, swallowed it whole, and now thinks he saw it happen, and thinks he remembers seeing it. Not even that: he’s certain he remembers seeing it, and he treats skepticism with amused contempt.

Stupidity in action. It’s not a pretty sight.

(He embellished the story with a bit about Gore trying to scare North, saying North had looked down the barrel of a blah blah blah and wasn’t about to be scared by blah blah blah – I became less kind and loving for long enough to interject that Gore had been in the military too. I wanted also to point out that most military people despise Oliver North; they think he’s a traitor and a disgrace to the service…but I didn’t. Too many flies to swat.)

Not a pretty sight.

The Ian Ramsey Centre via the Wayback Machine.

It has an epigraph.

Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but both look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect. Freeman Dyson 

Not really; not really; not exactly; not in the sense implied; not really; not at all.

The Centre also sponsors regional conferences to encourage new networks for examining connections between theology and the sciences; and through its international workshops it enhances the quality of courses on science and religion that are taught worldwide.

What connections between theology and the sciences? What connections are there? None that I know of. What connections could there be?

As for courses on science and religion, the whole idea of such courses is mostly the child of the Templeton Foundation, fostered through satellite outfits like the Ian Ramsey Centre, so that Templeton “Fellows” can fan out and talk about science’n’religion as if they went together like salt’n’pepper.

Here we go again. Via Jerry – we learn of a CNN report on a “huge” new study that tells us religion is everywhere. (You don’t say.)

What the CNN report does not tell us, however, is that the “huge” new study was funded by the Templeton Foundation. CNN doesn’t bother to mention Templeton. It doesn’t bother to mention that Roger Trigg is at the Ian Ramsey Centre, which is Templeton up to its eyeballs.

Interestingly, perhaps, I can’t find the IRC’s history on its site or elsewhere (and I have to rush away soon, so can’t dig harder). I know I found it in the past, and I’m pretty sure it was on its site, on the About page. I wonder if they’ve…doctored it.

At any rate – this Huge project is Templeton apologetics, yet the CNN article doesn’t mention the fact. Yet fans of Templeton express outrage when anyone says it operates by stealth. Well…what would you call this?

Jerry has a post (how does he do it while on the road admiring the beauties of Banff?) about a reader who reports on one path out of theism, from the literal kind to “the ground of all being” to the gleaming port of gnu atheism. I seized the opportunity to ask this reader what that meant to her/him, explaining that I always wonder what people mean by it. The answer was both informative and amusing.

When I was in the “ground of all being” stage, I thought of it as a representation of some mystical spiritual energy which imbued the universe with intelligence and purpose. Looking back, they were basically filler words to represent a concept I didn’t want to think about too deeply for fear of losing the sense of community I found in the church. When I did eventually begin to think about it honestly, I realized it sounded a lot like the Force from Star Wars, but without the cool lightsabers (I still want one of those).

I don’t know what authors like Tillich and Spong really mean by it, even after reading four or five of Spong’s books. I guess that’s why it was such a short hop to reading The God Delusion and thinking, “This makes so much more sense!”

Helpful.

One good thing, Rosenau’s goofy “I haven’t heard the Lindsay-Mooney podcast but I know PZ (who has heard it) is rong about it anyway” post elicited some good comments (along with a whole lot of bad ones from the usual suspects, especially the indefatigable McCarthy). From PZ for instance.

Your problem, Josh, is a total inability to appreciate any approach beyond your own. There is no surprising inconsistency in my views; all along the Gnus have been saying we need a multiplicity of approaches, so I can simultaneously endorse someone advocating a softer approach while favoring a hard core strategy myself.

My approach works for some people — actually, it works very, very well for a lot of people. And some people run away screaming. So? I’m not the one pretending a one-size-fits-all set of tactics is the way to go.

Quite. Me neither. I certainly don’t dispute that some people run away screaming. Mooney seems to think we don’t get that. Of course we get it.

And from someone called horse-pheathers.

Being nice doesn’t work. All that happens when you treat rank superstition with respect is you lend it credence it doesn’t deserve. If polite, rational argument stood a chance of swaying the believers, we wouldn’t be living in a world where over 80% of the population is some form of theist.

As H.L.Mencken observed in 1925, “The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.”

See? We ain’t so gnu.

Correction: May 14 6:59 a.m. We ain’t so new. We are gnu, but not new.

I have a few stalkers. Not real stalkers, just cyberstalkers. Maybe not even real cyberstalkers – just people who hate me and monitor my every online move and frequently blog or comment or tweet about how bad and stupid I am. One of them (that I know of) goes in for obscenity, but he talks that way about everyone and everything, so I don’t suppose he has many readers, especially not readers with any sense. Others just do stupid sneery stuff about new atheism and how pathetic it is that I’m saying whatever it is this time.

They’re all male, the ones I know about. Make of that what you will.

It’s odd having stalkers. It’s odd having people that worked up about One. It’s odd having people who after months or even years are still watching, still staring, still fuming, still blogging or commenting or tweeting.

(Mind you, I suppose C___s M____y could say the same thing about me. But C___s M____y has a much bigger public profile than I do – what C___s M____y says and writes has far more impact in the wider world. Furthermore, months go by when I don’t murmur a syllable about C___s M____y. My stalkers take much shorter breaks.)

Never mind. It’s Friday afternoon, and the people gutting the house 10 feet away from me across the alley will be leaving soon, and then I won’t be hearing them again until Monday morning; that will be pleasant.

Have a nice weekend, Stalkers! Well, a weekend, anyway. Have one. Have a weekend, and a rest, and maybe a chill pill.