You can add "the peach" and "devchelle32" to the long list of new atheist shitheads

[Cassius Clay]

Fucking assholes. I always hoped Peach was good people, but had this nagging suspicion that she wasn't. It's finally confirmed.

[Derived Absurdity]

Name me one "new atheist" who isn't a shithead.

Name me one.

One.

[phe_de]

Two people Google doesn't even know exist?

EDIT: Or are you talking about Peach & devchelle2 ?

[Cassius Clay]

Two people Google doesn't even know exist?

EDIT: Or are you talking about Peach & devchelle2 ?

Yea

[Cassius Clay]

Name me one "new atheist" who isn't a shithead.

Name me one.

One.

Rebecca Watson is aight.

[Derived Absurdity]

Eh, she seems okay, I guess.

[phe_de]

Most Google hits for them are a video about Pride 2014. Atheism isn't even mentioned there.

[Cassius Clay]

Peach was a bit of a name at the start of the New Atheism movement on youtube. Devchelle2 is her boyfriend/husband. He really isn't much of a name, but people know him through Peach.

[Cassius Clay]

Eh, she seems okay, I guess.

I like theoreticalbullshit too. I really hope he isn't a douche.

[phe_de]

Peach was a bit of a name at the start of the New Atheism movement on youtube. Devchelle2 is her boyfriend/husband. He really isn't much of a name, but people know him through Peach.

I just googled "Peach new Atheism" (without quotation marks), and the first hit was this:
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/current ... %99t-jerks

Guess the peach mentioned in this thread is not that important.

[Derived Absurdity]

Eh, she seems okay, I guess.

I like theoreticalbullshit too. I really hope he isn't a douche.

TheoreticalBullshit is pretty cool. He was my favorite person on Youtube a long time ago. But he does have some douchey moments. He said once that he's a big fan of Sam Harris and in one of his earlier videos he said something about how discrimination against atheists is comparable to discrimination against blacks and Jews. He might have changed a bit on those. But still... be wary.

EDIT: I also wouldn't call him a "new atheist", really, although I'm not sure why.

[Cassius Clay]

Fuck...that sounds very douchey.

[Derived Absurdity]

tbf that was like ten years ago

[Monk]

I've grown to really dislike the "New Atheist/Skeptics Movement." I've always found Dawkins, Harris, Maher, etc. all annoying in regards to their condescending and combative nature toward religion and religious people, though I somewhat tolerated it. Once i started recognizing the blatant sexism that runs rampant through the movement, I just couldn't take it anymore.

It started with the "elevatorgate" thing*. After that, I started recognizing all the sexist bullshit comment from leaders of the "Skeptic Community" and then the defense by other leaders when there was blowback. I finally lost it when Michael Shermer, one of the big name leaders, was accused of rape. And, as you probably expected, basically all of the other big names in the community defended him even though the events described by his accuser were corroborated by others, AND other women apparently have accused him. I gotta give credit to PZ Myers, though. That guy has been great at calling out sexist bullshit in the community (he originally posted the rape accusation against Shermer on his blog and refused to take it down. He also DESTROYED the AmazingAtheist douchebag - seriously, it was amazing).

But yeah, after that I was just done with it.


*Side note: I originally was on the wrong side of the debate, and was a bit more sympathetic to Dawkins' view at the time (although I thought he was being a dick about it). Many posters over the course of several weeks , such as Dezn (?) and aels and Dragon, convinced me that I was wrong. I consider this to be the catalyst for my change in views in regards to sexism and women's rights (away from the standard privileged white guy view). So basically, you can change people's views on the internetz! It does happen!

[Faustus5]

Name me one "new atheist" who isn't a shithead.

Name me one.

One.

In addition to Watson, I'd add P.Z. Myers, Jen McCreight, and Greta Christina. A year ago I would have added Ophelia Benson, but I find her views on gender identity kind of shitty.

[Derived Absurdity]

P.Z. Myers is on the right side of social justice issues, but he's also a shithead. He's just another narcissist who wades into topics he doesn't understand and refuses to acknowledge when he gets schooled on them. Just a few days he tried to pick a fight with Stephen Hsu on the topic of genetic engineering and it was didn't go well for him.

I don't really know Greta Christina very well and I've never heard of Jen McCreight.

[Monk]

I agree that Myers is still a dick, and I actually have more respect for him now that he receives such backlash from MRAs and whatnot.

Regarding the Hsu thing, I think Hsu is probably right that we can improve intelligence using the CRISPR if we identify SNPs that negatively affect IQ, though I think he's probably overstating how much. I think Myers is right in that there's likely some trade-off to greater intelligence, though his article has a lot of value-based criticisms rather than scientific ones. Hsu uses the size of chickens from 50s to today as an example as to why Myers is wrong, but I'm not sure how comparable that is. Pure size is not all that difficult to increase, but other traits are. Horse racing is an example someone mentioned in the comments, where they've peaked in how fast they can get horses to run. Maybe with CRISPR they can get a little bit better, but I doubt by a significant amount. There's a whole bunch of interactions going on with something human intelligence, and it's likely you're going to hit a wall a bit earlier than with something like increases in size.

[Derived Absurdity]

The problem with his car analogy is that we know IQ is correlated with a lot of other things that we would like to improve/enhance and that it doesn't trade off on many other attributes that we know of - health, longevity, sociability, physical fitness, attractiveness, etc. When it comes to IQ humans really can be more or less flattened out to a single linear parameter. No one knows why but we can.

I just can't believe he actually used the "if [X] is so good for us why didn't evolution give more of it to us?" argument. Like, does he have any clue at all how evolution works? That's honestly a creationist-level argument.

[CashRules]

Much of Hsu's position seems to be based on this photo:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Zs3CELduimU/V ... 7%2BPM.png

Interestingly enough, I can take a White Leghorn pullet, a White Plymouth Rock pullet and a Cornish Rock cross cockerel all at 5 - 6 weeks of age and put them side by side and photograph them all today and the result is going to be the same. Different breeds were different sizes in 1957 and in 1978 and are still different sizes today. The White Leghorn is almost exclusively an egg-laying breed because it's too small to be profitable as a meat chicken. You want your egg-laying machines to take as little expense (feed) as possible per egg produced. The Leghorn breed is the best at producing the most eggs for the least amount of feed and this hasn't changed in over a century. Plymouth Rocks are generally considered a dual-purpose breed, raised for both meat and eggs, which means that in the modern world they are not as popular commercially as they once were and are raised mostly as small barnyard flocks or by hobbyists. Also, Plymouth rocks lay brown eggs which are not as popular as white eggs (at least in the U.S.). None of the major egg-laying breeds is a brown egg layer. The Cornish Rock is a crossbreed originally developed as a broiler chicken prior to World War II. Almost all of the broiler market is made of various crossbreeds that are developed to do one thing - gain weight fast. These chickens are slaughtered at 5 to 6 weeks old because beyond that age that have grown so fast that their legs can't even support their own weight. This hasn't changed. What's Hsu's next trick, taking a photo of a VW Beetle from 1965 and comparing it to a 2016 Lincoln Town Carking and saying "Look, vehicles are getting larger!"? Now, many major chicken breeds have shown some nominal increase in size and improvement in basic form over the last 50+ years, but nothing like the misleading claim Hsu seems to be making by comparing two different breeds and a specially developed crossbreed, none of which has shown any significant change in forever. What he's doing with that photo is implying that the average size of chickens has increased about 450% in 50 years. If it wasn't his intent then his argument makes no sense because anybody should be able to understand that there are differences in different breeds. The ratio of those differences has had basically zero change in that 50 years time. A person could use that same stunt to "prove" that chickens have decreased in size since 1957.

[Monk]

Much of Hsu's position seems to be based on this photo:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Zs3CELduimU/V ... 7%2BPM.png

Interestingly enough, I can take a White Leghorn pullet, a White Plymouth Rock pullet and a Cornish Rock cross cockerel all at 5 - 6 weeks of age and put them side by side and photograph them all today and the result is going to be the same. Different breeds were different sizes in 1957 and in 1978 and are still different sizes today. The White Leghorn is almost exclusively an egg-laying breed because it's too small to be profitable as a meat chicken. You want your egg-laying machines to take as little expense (feed) as possible per egg produced. The Leghorn breed is the best at producing the most eggs for the least amount of feed and this hasn't changed in over a century. Plymouth Rocks are generally considered a dual-purpose breed, raised for both meat and eggs, which means that in the modern world they are not as popular commercially as they once were and are raised mostly as small barnyard flocks or by hobbyists. Also, Plymouth rocks lay brown eggs which are not as popular as white eggs (at least in the U.S.). None of the major egg-laying breeds is a brown egg layer. The Cornish Rock is a crossbreed originally developed as a broiler chicken prior to World War II. Almost all of the broiler market is made of various crossbreeds that are developed to do one thing - gain weight fast. These chickens are slaughtered at 5 to 6 weeks old because beyond that age that have grown so fast that their legs can't even support their own weight. This hasn't changed. What's Hsu's next trick, taking a photo of a VW Beetle from 1965 and comparing it to a 2016 Lincoln Town Carking and saying "Look, vehicles are getting larger!"? Now, many major chicken breeds have shown some nominal increase in size and improvement in basic form over the last 50+ years, but nothing like the misleading claim Hsu seems to be making by comparing two different breeds and a specially developed crossbreed, none of which has shown any significant change in forever. What he's doing with that photo is implying that the average size of chickens has increased about 450% in 50 years. If it wasn't his intent then his argument makes no sense because anybody should be able to understand that there are differences in different breeds. The ratio of those differences has had basically zero change in that 50 years time. A person could use that same stunt to "prove" that chickens have decreased in size since 1957.

Wait, so those aren't even the seem strain of chicken in the photo?

[CashRules]

No breed of chicken has increased in size by 450%.

[Monk]

Haha, that's too funny. I've actually seen that photo several times. I had no idea.

[CashRules]

It does 'sort of' admit what is going on by saying below the photo "a breed from 1957", "a breed from 1978" and "a breed from 2005". What it doesn't tell is that all three of those breeds existed in 1957, 1978, and 2005. The point they are trying to make actually has some merit, but the dishonest way they go about trying to make it is the type of thing science should try to avoid. There have, of course, been advancements in chicken breeds reaching the desired weight sooner but not 450% sooner. That chicken on the right weighs more than many chicken breeds weigh fully grown and is almost twice the weight of a full grown Leghorn.

[OurGloriousLeader]

I'm here to make myself feel good about disliking some people on the internet, what's the issue here?