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Where do you find these sky pilots?? Love those quotes below! And you keep posting blogs from this fellow for what reason??
"Beale suggested that honor killings, throwing acid in women's faces and even genital mutilation benefited women because they prevent female independence and promiscuity, which he repeatedly referred to as social ills. [16] Yes, this is who we're dealing with."
Theodore Beale, known by his pseudonym Vox Day, [1] is a science fiction author, game designer, [2] musician, [3] pseudo- libertarian, anti-vaxxer, [4] racist, [5] Christian apologist, pickup artist, stalker [6], and all-round fucking idiot. He is the epitome of evidence that not all artists are sensible, intelligent people, contrary to stereotype. He is a former pundit for WorldNetDaily (which says a lot about the demographic he's pitching to). Vox Day also has his own blog, " Vox Popoli," on which he attempts to "disprove" atheism, environmentalism, and liberalism through extensive use of poorly-thought out attacks. He also wrote the book The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, which pioneered some of the most popular methods of " debating" atheists (mostly just calling them names). He is the only person to be kicked out of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in its nearly fifty year history. [7] He claims to be a member of Mensa and to have an IQ "Over the so-called 'genius' threshhold." [8] If true, this demonstrates at least one of two things: Showcasing how allegedly smart people can make a living saying very stupid things, or that the IQ test is severely overrated as a measure of actual intellectual capacity. Or he may be lying.
[ edit] Beliefs and claimsVox Day disagrees with the Republican Party over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he has shown signs of moving towards conservatism in terms of social issues such as homosexuality (he's a homophobe). He is also a major Austrian school crank and gold bug (note all the Ludwig von Mises Institute and gold links on his blog; he generally prefers to stick to battling atheists because it is far less likely to divide his small audience). He is happy to be considered part of the neoreactionary movement, [9] though he ridicules the term "dark enlightenment" as media hype. [10]
The man also claims, in The Irrational Atheist, to refute the Euthyphro dilemma, which asks whether something is good because God says it, or God says it because it is good. His solution seems to be that it is both. He also uses the ad hominem/ non sequitur argument " Richard Dawkins is socially autistic, therefore Goddidit" very prominently in a stroke of genius that has garnered the attention of "respected institutions" such as Conservapedia. The screed is downloadable from this web site in all popular formats.
He is a creationist and "anti- materialist" (read: " anti-science"), which has caused him to enter numerous spats with, among others, PZ Myers and Phil Plait. [11] PZ Myers has stated that Beale is "in need of psychiatric help" [12] and also that Beale is "an appallingly freakish idiot, and always a reliable source for the most amazingly inane claim." [13]
According to him, " female equalitarianism" is a greater threat to science than religion. [14] [15] In response to a blog posting by PZ Myers questioning how, exactly, many of the unsavoury aspects of religion benefited women, Beale suggested that honor killings, throwing acid in women's faces and even genital mutilation benefited women because they prevent female independence and promiscuity, which he repeatedly referred to as social ills. [16] Yes, this is who we're dealing with.
He's also convinced that the July, 2012 theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado was the work of a federal government conspiracy to grab yer guns, which makes the appeal to "science and reason" in confirming similar nutjob conspiracy theories in that same essay quite amusing to read. [17]
In addition, Mr. Day is also responsible for the insight that Barack Obama is - and these are his exact words, now - a "bad black man." There's no word as to when he'll write a column accusing Obama of strangling newborn puppies and selling crack to preschoolers, though. [18]
Beale devotes quite a bit of drivel in The Irrational Atheist to his division of atheists along lines clearly intended to brand atheism as a religion: the "high church" atheists, who actually identify themselves as atheists and embrace atheism as an intellectual position, and "low church" atheists, which appears to encompass everyone who doesn't identify with a particular religious group. This sad excuse for taxonomy manages to combine the obvious ad hominem and argument by assertion with either a thumbfingered analogy or a painful ignorance of history - it's never clear that he actually knows what "high church" and "low church" mean, and their original meanings are in no way compatible with his analogy.
[ edit] InsightsSome of his most brilliant insights are to be found on Vox Popoli or in The Irrational Atheist. On homosexuality, he says:
“”Homosexuality is a birth defect from every relevant secular, material, and sociological perspective...[we must] help them achieve sexual normality. [19]
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On Muslims and Brits:
“”You silly English twit. Limit your historically ignorant, politically correct, socialist sensitivity concerns to Londonistan and the rest of your island. [20]
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His "refutation" of atheism:
“”[I]mpaired social cognition... is the hallmark of the militant New Atheists. [T]he anti-religious socially autistic crusaders... simply cannot understand that your religious beliefs, whatever they might be, are no legitimate concern of theirs. [21] High Church atheism may be little more than a mental disorder taking the form of literal autism. [22]
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On race and intelligence:
“”It is absurd to imagine that there is absolutely no link between race and intelligence. [23]
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On his "method" to bring peace to the Middle East:
“”The Israeli government must announce to the world a unilateral ceasefire, balanced by the deadly promise that for every Israeli soldier killed, 25 Palestinian police will die. For every civilian, 100 non-combatant Palestinian adults will be slain, and for every child, 1000 adults. [24]
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On women, education and Malala Yousafzai:
“”Ironically, in light of the strong correlation between female education and demographic decline, a purely empirical perspective on Malala Yousafzai, the poster girl for global female education, may indicate that the Taliban's attempt to silence her was perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable. [25]
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Perhaps most hilariously, on women:
“”Because they are the intellectual driving force of humanity, men will be fine... It is written that women ruin everything. [14]
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In case that one wasn't disturbing enough:
“”I don't believe I could recommend this as a strategy for most men, but it is surely educational to learn that raping and killing a woman is demonstrably more attractive to women than behaving like a gentleman. And women, before all the inevitable snowflaking commences, please note that there is absolutely nothing to argue about here. It is an established empirical fact. [26]
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And:
“”First, there is no such thing as marital rape. Once consent is formally given in public ceremony, it cannot be revoked... If a woman believes in the concept of marital rape, absolutely do not marry her! [27]
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[ edit] Science Fiction Writers of AmericaHe's seen fit to take his act to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, since running for that organization's presidency with an obnoxiously anti-feminist platform (as well as previously insulting outgoing SFWA president John Scalzi by calling him "McRapey" for the usual predictable VD reasons) is such a classy way to earn him votes in a literary organization with quite a strong female membership. [28] To his credit, Scalzi didn't call him out by name for his continuing obsession with him; he didn't have to. [29]
Despite the public support of an anonymously written blog called the Write Agenda that is suspected by many authors of being a front for a particularly scammy vanity-press-playing-real-publisher, Beale lost his bid.
Beale then decided to feel aggrieved at being mentioned (though not actually named) as a "misogynist, racist and anti-Semite" in the context of his candidacy in a speech by author N. K. Jemisin at an Australian science fiction convention. [30] He then responded with a post that was chock full of exactly what Jemisin was complaining about, which nicely proved her point. [31] This led to a review of Beale's membership, ultimately resulting in his expulsion from the SFWA. [32]
[ edit] Other strangenessHe once created an 18-button mouse called the WarMouse; it was originally called the OpenOffice.org mouse until Sun Microsystems took issue with unauthorized use of their trademark. Why it never occurred to him that cramming so many buttons plus a joystick into a space occupied normally by no more than four buttons was anything but a UI abomination, no one really knows.
He has it together better than his father, tax protester and gibbering crank Robert Beale, a backer of WND. He once had a non-wingnutty moment when he reviewed Day of the Tentacle for the Toledo Blade newspaper, praising it highly. [33] |
