Skeptico

Skeptico - A "Top Resource" in Astrology

Talk about missing the point.

I received this email from the email address of Ryan Flaherty, although confusingly it was signed Mark Cutler.  The subject was “love your site” – well, who could resist that?  Here’s the email:

Our website Sunlightfoundation.org is a Professional Database that is used by over 100,000 users in the astrological/psychic world monthly to seek  psychic or astrological advice. We make this possible by updating the information daily and keeping up to date on recent astrological news. We take pride in being one of the largest websites in the industry and take what our users and affiliates say into account to make this website much more user friendly. We recently ran a poll asking the users that are most familiar with the site what types of informational resources they use to keep up to date or even to simply find great information. Our users primarily are interested in blogs and websites Such as yours. I have reviewed your information and must say, I absolutely love the content you have made available to the public and would like to make your site a link on ours. I would like to offer you our Featured Resource badge that can be posted on your site, which recognizes you as a top resource in the psychic/astrology field or simply a text link within your site (Psychic Reading). I would also like to post your site in our resources page with a FULL banner to make your site  available to my thousands of users. Thanks again for the great information and I look forward to the great responses your site will receive from my users!

As you can imagine I was thrilled, not to say a little proud that I was being recognized as a top resource in astrology!  I figured that all my work in this area had finally paid off.  Excitedly, I replied:

Ryan:

I'm glad you like my blog.  Please feel free to link my site on yours.  You can use my blog url, or perhaps the url to just my astrology articles would be better:

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/astrology/

Please send me your Featured Resource badge, that you described in your email. It would be great to be recognized as a top resource in the psychic/astrology field, as you mention.

Several days have passed and yet I haven’t received my Featured Resource badge, as Ryan/Mark promised. I hope he hasn’t had second thoughts.  Nah – I’m sure it’s on its way.

Roseneau Is Projecting Again

He’s at it again.  Josh Rosenau has another post up On accommodationism.  He ends with:

…I've occasionally used the term "enabler" to describe the folks who oppose whatever accommodationism might be.

(Sigh.)

I called Josh on this piece of projection before.

Think about this.  Considering a drug addict, say - which is the enabler:

1. The one who helps the addict get drugs, lends him money to get drugs, who tells him drug addiction is not that bad, tells him you can do drugs and live a normal life, would never tell him to give up, or
2. The one who tells the addict to stop doing drugs, says doing drugs is stupid, hides his drugs, hides his drug money, points to studies saying drugs are bad, gets angry at the addict when he’s high.

Clearly the enabler is #1.

Now, question for the class, which one (# 1 or # 2 above), by analogy, is the accommodationist, and which the new atheist?

As I wrote in a comment on Josh’s blog:

“You (the accomodationists) tell the addict (religious believer) that their religious delusions are OK and totally not inconsistent with science at all.  You (the accomodationists) are the ones who actually do enable the addicts (religious believers) by providing them with their drugs (reasons why religion and science are compatible).  I realize you are acting out of love for the religious people you come into contact with, but in reality, you’re making the problem worse.  That’s up to you, but you really should stop this dishonest labeling of the non-accomodationists with what you are actually doing yourself. It’s called projection.”

Of course, Josh is under no obligation to respond to what I wrote, to justify his use of the word.  But, if he’s not going to respond, then he should at least have the intellectual honesty to stop parroting this nonsense.