Sunday, October 21, 2012

Metacrock's Latest Big, Fat, Lie

So Metacrock claims he has these 200 studies that prove his new-age version of Jesus is real. Basically it is a bibliography he took from someone else's work.

It has a bunch of stuff about LSD studies and meditation, and not a single one of these "studies" claims to prove anything supernatural. 


So anyway, he was hawking his snake oil of a list on CARM recently and a poster calls him out on the fact that they are not all peer-reviewed studies in academic journals. like he claims.


Thatcat: I looked at your 200 studies. The one I looked into was a Newsweek article about a conference of scientists who happen to be religious.


Though the whole list is basically a joke, this really stood out like a red flag. Having been caught Metacrock deleted the Newsweek citation from his blog.

Metacrock: how many times are you going to tell that lie? when you say "I looked at them" what the hell are you looking at? I have a bibliography. it has no news week article no it. 

Thatcat: Do you think you are fooling anyone? I saw the Newsweek article on the very page you linked to. There is no way you can pretend you didn't just delete it, and then try to make it out like I was imagining things. I bookmarked the page when it was there only yesterday. It is not there today. 

As it turns out Metacrock had copied and pasted the same list of bogus studies elsewhere on his blog and several posters found these other versions, all of which included the Newsweek article he said wasn't on it.


Having gotten caught in such an incredibly dishonest move, and even after calling Thatcat a liar, Metacrock tried to blame it on an imaginary employee. 

Metacrock: You know it's hard to deal a huge body of cousre. you have ever done a dissertation or a bib with 200 sources? It's hard to manage. so that was on some list and accidentally got put in by the typist. 

My god, what sort of childhood trauma would explain this bizarre behavior?  


Thursday, February 23, 2012

How does one become as ill-informed as Matacrock? Part of it is having the emotional development of a three year old. When he is proven wrong, which is continually, he has a temper tantrum and refuses to admit a mistake.

Now we were all like this when we were three but Metacrock never outgrew it. This is why he continually holds on to the dumbest ideas and just repeats them though everyone knows he is wrong.

Recently on the fundamentalist hate site CARM Metacrock proposed the "Chruch of the Holy Seplechur" as hard archaeological evidence for Jesus. Now no one but the most know nothing fundamentalist or historical moron would make such a claim. He obviously has no idea what real historians or archaeologists do. He seems to be totally oblivious to what a simple google search would reveal about the history of the that Church.

Here are some more classic Metacrock quotes:

There's a new book where a doctor and medical historian (a major forensic researcher) examined the secret Vatican archives and finds a huge number of resurrection accounts throughout history. She concludes they are true.

you are wasting my time. talking to you is absurd.

your concepts are stuck in a comic book frame work that's why you can't understand.

I said God is not a big man in the sky he's more like the laws of phsyics.

how many children did the atheists kill in the USSR?

Uops sorry. My mistake. i assumed you had a some brains.

I still undestand that it's really Jesus but he can be found in other faiths.

you are not really proving anything except that you don't understand study methodology. and you can't follow an argument.

you have no clue. go read some comics.

that math stuff is not so great. It's just a bunch of squiggles.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Have Christian apologetics totally lost the battle? Obviously yes.

Here is a quick example of Metacrock's special pleading. No wonder he constantly loses "debates."

Watch this.The self delusion is almost mind boggling.

I. Argument from epistemic judgment

enhanced by the studies but is independent of them. We can make this argument weather we have the studies or not.


Argument:


(1) No empirical evidence can prove the existence of the external world, other minds, or the reality of history, or other such basic things.

OK so right away he dismisses all evidence no matter how reliable, repeatable, or agreed upon by everyone you communicate with.

This is a bizarre tactic in apologetics that only reveals their dishonesty and the ignorance of their victims. It is always predictable that if they make arguments against verifiable evidence that they will quickly follow with some bullshit that they make up that you must believe on faith.

(2) We do not find this epistemological dilemma debilitating on a daily basis because we assume that if our experiences are consistent and regular than we can navigate in "reality" whether it is ultimately illusory of not.

(3) Consistency and regularity of personal experience is the key.

(4) religious experience can also be regular and consistent, perhaps not to the same degree, but in the same way.

Yep, here you go. Even though he has dismissed the idea that the sky is blue we are now supposed to believe that all religious experiences are regular and consistent.

Metacrock only has 2 arguments for his strange new age religion and they are faith healing and "mystical" experiences. Here he is arguing for the latter. He is trying to get to the idea that peak experiences are supernatural. Not just supernatural but evidence for his weird religion that has a membership of one.

Obviously peak experiences are similar. They are a result of brain chemistry and all human brains are similar.

The idea that this is evidence of the supernatural is just the simplistic fantasy of a 50 something virgin man-boy.

(5) Inersubjective


RE of this type has a commonality shared by bleievers all over the world, in different times and diffrent places, just as the exeternal world seems to be percieved the same by everyone.

I believe what he means to say here is intersubjectivity. This is basically an idea from Scientology, a subject Metacrock knows nothing about as evidenced by his imagining he is onto something special.



(6) Reala and Lasting effects.

Somehow the real and lasting effects of dying in a car accident don't count but the effects of peak experiences somehow prove that magic is for real.

Considering that Matacrock only has 2 arguments for his new age religion you would imagine he would at least have looked into them a bit. As anyone familiar with the subject knows almost everyone has these peak experiences at one time or another and they are in no way the monopoly of religion.

Calling them "mystical" experiences is just a way of adding woo woo to the issue.


(7) therefore, we have as much justification for assuming religious belief based upon experince as for assuming the reality of the external world or the existence of other minds.

This is possibly one of the dumbest thing any human being has written in the past 10,000 years, or whenever writing was invented.

You would hope it is some kind of joke, but he is perfectly serious.

Thursday, February 16, 2012



The above needs no explanation.
The wit and wisdom of Metacrock:



ahahahahah you are just spouting off BS about things you don't understand


empiricism cannot determine if something is true.


there's no point. how childish and conceded. I was a debate in high school and college debate.


not having religion is like blowing your brains out


we can never trust an atheist's view.


your arguments are silly and ignornant as usual.


ahahahaahahahaahah that's not cleaver. it's not even funny. It's funny pathetic thinking about you think you are being cleaver.


get over the fallacious idiocy that believing is not a big man is special pleading.


so what so fudgecake what? use your brain for a choice. I said it's only a choice of chruch government not a separation like it used to be.


you should be ashamed at how ignorant you are. no one could watch 30 seconds of Christian media without knowing this.


I wouldn't expect you to understand. it takes intelligence.


that shows who totally ignorant you are.


you have read no evidence.


you never answer actual arguments. Given the huge number of misconceptions you have about my ideas maybe it's time to keep your mouth shut and learn. you ever think of just listening?


This is what all brain washed lackeys do hen confronted with something they don't understand.


that's just a general tacky little misconception. What little childish minds who don't think or care about truth cna't conceive of is that you don't have GET IT RIGHT!
THERE DOSE NOT HAVE TO BE A SINGLE TRUE CHRUCH! GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF FUNDAMENTALISM? dON'T YOU EVER WANT TO GROW?
you learn to mouth the slogans unbelief but you are head is still thinking like a fundie. don't you ever want to grow up and stop being a fundie?


Egyptian, Babylonian and pre Babylonian did not have a well developed system of ethics, they didn't need them.


if there's a hell you will burn there.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Quote Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post

in terms of getting to the end of the day My way of life works a lot better than the atheist pretense of all knowing nothing. The studies bear this out.

The Crock has this idea that his "way of life," which I can only assume means being religious works better.

I responded with these simple list that prove the opposite:

Following is Gallup's entire list of states, in order of what percentage of respondents said religion is "an important part" of their daily lives:

• Mississippi: 85%
• Alabama: 82%
• South Carolina: 80%
• Tennessee: 79%
• Louisiana: 78%
• Arkansas: 78%
• Georgia: 76%
• North Carolina: 76%
• Oklahoma: 75%
• Kentucky: 74%
• Texas: 74%
• West Virginia: 71%
• Kansas: 70%
• Utah: 69%
• Missouri: 68%
• Virginia: 68%
• South Dakota: 68%
• North Dakota: 68%
• Indiana: 68%
• Nebraska: 67%
• New Mexico: 66%
• Pennsylvania: 65%
• Florida: 65%
• Maryland: 65%
• Ohio: 65%
• Iowa: 64%
• Minnesota: 64%
• Illinois: 64%
• Michigan: 64%
• Delaware: 61%
• Wisconsin: 61%
• District of Columbia: 61%
• Idaho: 61%
• Arizona: 61%
• New Jersey: 60%
• Wyoming: 58%
• Colorado: 57%
• Hawaii: 57%
• California: 57%
• Montana: 56%
• New York: 56%
• Connecticut: 55%
• Nevada: 54%
• Rhode Island: 53%
• Oregon: 53%
• Washington: 52%
• Alaska: 51%
• Massachusetts: 48%
• Maine: 48%
• New Hampshire: 46%
• Vermont: 42%


State Health Rankings

1. New Hampshire

2. Minnesota

3 Massachusetts

4. Utah

5. Connecticut

6. Vermont

7. Iowa (tie)

7. Colorado (tie)

9. North Dakota

10. Maine

11. Washington (tie)

11. Wisconsin (tie)

13. Rhode Island

14. Hawaii

15. Nebraska

16. South Dakota

17. Oregon

18. Virginia

19. New Jersey

20. Idaho

21. Kansas

22. Indiana

23. Pennsylvania

24. Montana (tie)

24. California (tie)

26. Wyoming

27. Ohio

28. Maryland

29. Michigan

30. Alaska

31. Illinois

32. New York (tie)

32. Missouri (tie)

34. Arizona

35. Delaware

36. North Carolina

37. Texas

38. Nevada

39. Kentucky

40. Georgia

41. West Virginia

42. New Mexico

43. Florida

44. Tennessee

45. Alabama

46. Oklahoma

47. Arkansas

48. South Carolina

49. Mississippi

50. Louisiana

He replied to getting proven wrong once again with:

what does that have to do with anything? You are using appeal to popularity.

Seriously. he really did that.

Here is another awesome diatribe.


"Blondie" Lies about My Honesty With Evidence.

ON CARM in an exchange on the moral argument:

Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
you don't understand the moral argument. I'm not surprised. this is the kind of third rate attempt we get when we are content to stop with the surface of level of ideolgoical sloganizing.
I understand the moral argument.


The moral argument that the Crock is referring to is Kant's idea that unless you believe in some objective moral system you are not allowed to make value judgments concerning human behavior. Of course this is silly on a thousand levels and has been shot down many, many times.

Still, apologists like to bring it up because they can ask the atheists where they get their morals from and throw them off in debates. The theist can always answer any question with "on account a' Jesus." The moral argument is not so much an argument as a debate trick.

Blondie:

I doubt you do because you have never been able to defend any position.

I still remember when you pulled a quote from some quy off the Internet and actually went in and changed a word to make is sounded like he supported your point. When I caught you you said I was stupid and that you we're modifying it or something and I was too dumb to know what that meant. I have never seen anyone do anything so nakedly dishonest and shameful on one of these forums.
when challenged he can't come across with the skinny.

Here he wants me to dig through tens of thousands of CARM threads to find this one post. All I can say is that he did it and when I caught him he didn't deny it, he tried to justify it.

I offer Metacrock's character as my witness.

Originally Posted by ferengi View Post
Evidence please.

Even if it were true - you cannot say what he did was wrong - because your feelings are not a basis for a moral law - objective or otherwise.

It is true and it is wrong, in my subjective opinion. One of the many reasons that the moral argument is not just wrong but stupid is ferengi's response.

He defends the Crock's dishonesty by claiming I have no right to make a value judgment about his lies.

See, you gotta believe in Jesus or something to make those kind of calls.


Blondie:

In your subjective opinion because, like so many Christians, you have a broken moral compass.

Like I said. People that believe in objective morality often end up justifying things we all believe to be wrong. Atheists just end up getting tongue tied or saying human happiness or something is the foundation for morality.
several things to notice:

(1) I have repeated remakes that I don't argue for objective ethics I think that is not a valid concern of major ethicist such as Kant, ect. so I don't use it.

(2) the fact that tries to stick me with it shows (a) he has never actually paid attention to any of my arguments. (b) I've denied over and over that I"m into objective ethics (c) he clearly doesn't care about truth, he thinks in stereotypes the real facts of a situation are secondary to him.

The Crock is so confused between the Evangelical/fundamentalist and new age versions of his made up religion he can't even make a consistent point. He uses the moral argument as a weapon and then denies that it is valid.

(3) the real issue is his bid to assassinate my charter.. This twister little guy is a street fighter. He goes for the jugular. he knows my work as a scholar is improtant to me so tha'ts what he tries to destroy from day one. He began attacking my scholarship and my reserach ability (which are so clearly better than since he used 100 year old articles in documentation about Lourdes) That's what he's out to destroy is the understanding that I'm a scholar and that's what I'm good at. He's lied in many ways to try and destroy that reputation.

As I mentioned before, the Crock only has 2 arguments for his new age version of Christianity: peak experiences and faith healing. For some reason the Lourdes "miracles" are somehow more sober than others.

The Crock is somehow mindbogglingly gullible when it comes to Lourdes. He is obviously unaware of what the "miracle" implies or that there are many of the healing wells around the area.

(4) I don't care that most atheist her hate my guts, I don't care if you think you have a valid reason, which you don't. I don't give a damn. I understand why I fight back against your bullying I understand why can't admit that you bully.

I will now allow this aspect of it to be destroyed without taking the character assassin down with me.


(5) please notice how totally unfair this is to make this kind charge and not have any evidence. He could be totally making this up. I'm willing to think he's just not a very good researcher so he doesn't understand something, or it was typo and it's too good to pass up.

a mistake that plays so into his hands is too good for him to not use somehow.

think of the unfair nature of it to say that and not have proof. It's just destructive he could lie about it so easily. If no one cares that it's just and someone is being hurt unfairly then its so easy to do. what are you going to do when someone does to you?

I love it when he starts to lose it. The Crock has the emotional level of of child. It would be tempting to feel sorry for him but he is just so mean spirited.


If there was any reality to it he would at least have a name. he doesn't offer any kind of info. We don't know when it happened, what the issue was no idea.

I's so obviously just propaganda.

when someone demands that he makes good he just plays off of stereotypes and general hatred for Chrsitians.

Once again, the Crock's character is the most powerful argument against his "arguments."


Here is what the Crock has posted in a lame attempt to misrepresent my opinion:

The Crock's comments are in green.

A Lesson in Arguing with ATheist "Greasie Debaters"

Photobucket

Here's an exchange that is instructive. Blondie is continuing his character assignation/disinformation camp again against me. This consists of treating everything I say as though it was a doge of his previous answers, when in reality he has not answered the previous argument that I made.

posts 4, then 9-11

Originally Posted by blondie View Post
#4 is an argument against your position. There are lots of different gods and some religions have no gods at all.

Actually all of the examples are bogus. No one cane agree on what the Bible says, I have shown you dozens of times that "mystical" experiences are in no way limited to religion and deductive reasoning leads to atheism.



my answer to these which has gone unanswered:

#4 of his arguments, which he fails to mention is, "correlation with world religions." It is an answer to the question of where the knowledge of what he calls god comes from. All 5 answers are:

(1) Bible
(2) the Experience of mystics
(4) correlation with world religions
(5) deductive reasoning

Note when I say 5 I mean 4. He left out number 3.

Actually I did answer and my answer was as follows:

"I've corrected you on these issues time and time again.

You never defend them or address the objections. You just restate your bogus assertions again."

The dishonesty of the Crock has no limits. It is like he assumes no one will even click on his link to see if he is telling the truth. Because he is posting on CARM and that site has a well-known policy of letting theists lie and slander, the Crock is assuming that he can just lie at will without the protection of the biased moderators of that particular hate site.

That is the point of this blog.

He continues:

your arguments are silly and ignorant as usual.

(1) no 4 is not agaisnt my position. you refuse to listen and you can't understand it anyway. This is my position not yours. you are working from stereotypes you think in stereotypes rather than actual reasoning.

Here he seems to be making the argument that the fact that all the various religions throughout history have some similarities, and thus are classified in the same term, is somehow a source of knowledge for his bizarre new age religion.

It's the basis for Anthropocentric universalism. It's based upon the universal nature of mystical experience, the common core thesis. Take the names and references to doctrines out and just describe the experiences they are all describing the same thing.


The Crock has two arguments for his religion. One is faith healing and the other is so-calledmystical experiences. Here he is arguing for mystical experiences. People from all faith traditions have experiences. Research into them has revealed that they are not limited to religion at all. Almost everyone has peak experiences. Musicians in the zone, joggers, athletes, etc.

This is certainly no source of knowledge that would point to the Crock's particular new age version of Christianity.

(2) The assertion that one can agree no the bible that applies to all form of knowledge and every book and all ideas. pointing that out is useless. that's like saying "the lights are on in this room." So what? That's just par for the course.

Here he seems to be saying that just because no one can agree on the Bible doesn't mean he isn't the one that has really figured it out.

then he comes on talking like I didn't answer what he just said: This is the very next post.

Originally Posted by blondie View Post
I've corrected you on these issues time and time again.

Meta
Notice no mention of what I said abobve labled (1) and (2). no mention of studies no mention of what I said at all. He starts speaking as though what I said was evasive and didn't respond in reality if you look above I answered exactly both his comments which he doesn't respond to at all!
(still speaking to him:)
You never defend them or address the objections. You just restate your bogus assertions again.
you are full fo it. all you ever do is make groundless remakes with nothing to back them up and when I site source you say "your sources are always bad and must never taken seriously" hen you don't say why you just dispense the truth from on high. you never have counter evidence and you never deal with methodology.

I just answered your crap on issue 4 you have not responded, this is not a response.

your comments are misleading becasue they imply that I somehow didn't respond when in fact you did not respond.


Of course I have responded to his argument from mystical experiences a number of times. As stated above the most obvious objection is that these experiences are not specifically associated with religion. He has never addressed this objection. He just keeps restating his bogus point over and over again.

The studies he refers to are studies of peak experience, meditation, LSD studies and the like. Somehow he imagines that this is support for Christianity.

Just the way they do it. forget the facts. Just pretend I didn't answer at all and forge ahead speaking as though your correcting something in reality it's you are didn't respond. "Forge" is a good term (forge ahead) because this the action of someone who doesn't care for truth is not concerned with learning.


This is what you must do to handle these guys. you have to coutner-assert and constantly sum up what's been said so far. cut and paste previous responses to show they have not answered it.

Hopefully he will continue to make these same bogus assertions to provide amusement for the intellectually honest.