Here’s an email not from a believer, but from an antitheist. However, this person may be one of the Lizard Illuminati. Name redacted to protected the reptilian.
Dear Dr Coyne,
I would very much value your opinion and feedback.
I aim to specialize in psychological and neurocognitive warfare. The weaponization of religion has been evolving over millenia [sic] (like When South America was invaded, they sent conquistadores and missionaries in step; one to break the body and the other to enslave the mind). Today Religion is a schizophrenia induced by governments across the world for power and social control.
I am afraid that all the science in the world cannot help us. The masses are largely uneducated (not to mention heavily indoctrinated) and religions have been shown to be insanely resilient; adapting or mutating to survive.
I believe history is our greatest weapon:
1. Many of these religions are patriarchal. They deny women power and so much more.
2. The Latinos and the blacks were converted over centuries of invasion, genocide, slavery, torture and indoctrination.
We need to start a race and gender war that can bring down the Catholic Church. All else will fall like dominoes.
TheOthanatologist
#GenerationalEpigeneticWarfare
#GenerationalMemeticWarfare
As for my “opinion and feedback”, I was tempted to say that this person needs help—or at least anger management—but I didn’t engage. It’s never a good idea to engage with stuff like this. The thing is, I agree with a lot of what this person said, but he/she/zir lost me at “we need to start a race and gender war.” I’m a conscientious objector!
My advice: don’t touch any part of that with a ten-foot pole or you might end up like Alan Berg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Berg
Bizarre.
Why does this person target the Catholic Church only? First?
The other religions will then fall like Dominoes? This person must be referring to pizza.
Forgot to check notify.
“sub” is the idiom around here.
I dunno, I find that could be a sign that the person is an ex-Catholic or ex-Christian of some sort. The Catholic church seems to be the target of hatred against a lot of things for Christians. Many evangelical churches got their start by breaking with the Catholic church and they spend a lot of their time complaining about how bad the Catholics are.
And here I had been thinking it was Helvetica all this time!
I thought the same thing: I get what h/she is saying; but, I too, was lost at “race and gender war,” and also wondered: how exactly will this topple the Catholic church?
I would say this guy has mostly one thing on his mind – warfare. They need a few more like this in the Trump administration. He could work like a counter to some of the religious nuts already there. The temporary attorney general, Whitaker,thinks all new judges should be only those with a religious world view. So send this guy in to do something about that. He is just what the doctor ordered.
White supremacists talk about a great war as well. A giant ethno war to change how things are. Could be they have taken up the white supremacists’ ideas.
In any case, this guy is so nuts he belongs in the Trump admin. doing something. I am still trying to get over the damage done yesterday by his one day trip to Iraq.
“…doing something.”
Ambassador to the Vatican, perhaps.
You’ve got to admire his efficiency at angering many people in one fell swoop.
When it actually does come time to kick the tires and light the fires, he will need the help of hard men. Rough men, like those of whom Orwell (or maybe Churchill; there seems to be some dispute on the point) spoke. Men like this one: https://www.somethingawful.com/news/johnstone-trigger-warning/
He says he aims to specualize. This may be someone around twenty years old or younger. Without some clue to his/her identity not much to be done. Other them a message back suggesting them see a mental health clinic immediately .
He’s not wrong … until he sattes his plan for action. We need a change of heart, not a change of elites running the show.
He’s not wrong … until he sattes his plan for action. We need a change of heart, not a change of elites running the show.
Shows that being anti-theist isn’t quite enough.
Good job for not engaging. No matter how tempting, it is a no-win situation. Personally, I would not provide any assistance or advice to anyone who wishes to weaponize anything.
2. The Latinos and the blacks were converted over centuries of invasion, genocide, slavery, torture and indoctrination.
Does this person believe Latinos are Native Americans?
Probably is thinking Aztecs and Mayans.
Many of them are indeed of Native American ancestry.
Signed: TheOthanatologist
WIKI:
Other than that single spark of intellectualism that email is of YouTube comment section standard. It’s obviously a young lad who spends his time playing WoW video games – a lad who dreams of being important in something, so why not neurocognitive warfare? [that’s things like the supposed microwave attacks on the Americans in Havana]
Sad sack with a future of shelf stacking ahead of him – there’s more of these young men every year who don’t ‘fit’ with the requirements of the world we’re cooking up.
Othanatology is the apparently the study or archeology of death (as in funerary practices).
I think that the TheOthanatologist is meant to mean the person who studies or “knows about” death.
Not my ideal party companion!
Poe? Whada’ya think?
Most of those who See Things for the Way They Are can’t write just a few short paragraphs.
I’m entertaining 4 hypotheses:
1/. Poe
2/. Someone sufficiently scarred by the Catholic Church, or representative thereof, that they are flailing around out of control.
3/. Someone churchy who thinks there is an international cartel of atheists dedicated to the armed overthrow of Christianity. They have a cunning plan to pretend to offer themselves up as a foot soldier, and discover The Secret Plans so that they can then reveal them to the world.
4/. A state actor emulating 3 above in order to muddy the waters and spread as much unrest and tribal strife as possible.
But mostly I’m leaning towards bat shit insane (take that any way you will).
Any of those four, what I find particularly weird, a give-away, is that he thinks the fall of the Catholic Church will automatically solve these problems.
That clearly is a give-away, but a give-away of what? 😄
Has the lad never heard about Islam?
Fifth possibility is an abuse of Psychodysleptics.
I came across a conspiracy theory yesterday I’d never heard before – it’s actually trans people who run the world.
Apparently, every first lady before Melania Trump was born a man, and those few who accept this theory but don’t support Trump think Melania was born male too. You have to have a trans wife to be US president. All the Jews we thought were running the world (as per ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’) have trans handlers.
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2018/12/26/all-the-first-ladies-before-melania-were-trans-according-to-a-dude-whos-been-retweeted-nine-times-by-donald-trump/
Sounds like ‘trying to get attebtion’ to me.
I guess it started with Michelle probably a Russian bot or so.
What is weird is that I find Michelle much more feminine than Melania.
I find them both quite sexy. Maybe I’m gay and haven’t been diagnosed yet. 😉
cr
Same here, Ms Trump is ‘better looking’ (according to ‘official pageant standards’), but Ms Obama is ‘sexier’ (according to my standards).
Omigods. There is some true bizarreness there.
Errm, if all those first ladies were trans, where did all their respective kids come from? Left on the White House doorstep by anonymous donors?
cr
Nope, their husbands were trans men :). These reptilians can change sex according to temperature.
Ummm, have any “First Ladies” ever given birth while actually (nominally) resident in the White House? It certainly isn’t impossible, but it would have to be one of the younger presidents. (Quick wiki-ing. Or even wiki-wiki. The first 5 runners are Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Ulysses S. Grant, Barack Obama. My limited knowledge of USian history would suggest that it has never happened.)
Always assuming that US public opinion doesn’t allow for a president with a piece of arm candy for a wife, with Americans being so religiously observant and all.
Actually, something like that. All are adopted.
Please stand by. The SCP Foundation will send its Antimemetics Division to administer amnestics shortly.
-[REDACTED]
“I aim to specialize in psychological and neurocognitive warfare.”
I think the writer is talking about war in the psychological sense.
For instance, when he says gender wars, I can only assume he means a “war” to change gender values, not a literal war between genders.
The focus on Catholicism is strange: maybe the writer is from a predominantly Catholic country.
Abrahamic religion in general would make more sense, given the current state of world affairs.
The Jews invented it, the Romans used it to define Europe, the Protestants/Catholics used it to enable European colonialism and the Muslims mostly used it as an identifier for the Middle East/Arab world.
It could be argued that NON-Catholic religion is having more impact globally. The US Catholic lobby is currently less strident than the Protestant and Jewish ones, the Protestant one being the de facto default.
This rather leaves out India and China, both of which seem poised to have more and more influence. So far it is their economic power that is key, rather than any religious factors.
The writer is fairly correct about religion being a good survivor: as a unifier of behaviour and cultural values it is a good strategy player in the sense of mutation and natural selection, even if its results are questionable.
Religion is ALWAYS political, otherwise it does not survive.
Religion is however ONLY one of the political players: secular thinking can/could supply other ethics, political approaches and ideologies.
The problem is, how to derive an improved politics which is non-religious.
Secular thinking so far has not been very collective or cohesive in the tribalist way that religion has been.
So far, it has been fairly destructive when applied in the forced, collective sense, mainly because it has been applied in extremes (totalitarian sytems resulting from Communist and Fascist ideologies). Not a step forward.
More moderate situations, what me might call “Democracies” could be seen as an expression of movement towards secularism. A state religion is intrinsically anti-Democratic. Totally incompatible with the whole principle of democracy.
Ironically, it is the gradual breaking of the hold of religion (particularly European Catholicism) which has led to the development of western democracies.
Islamic theocracies indicate just the opposite: more or less stuck in the same state as Mediaeval Christianity. Autocratic and Patriarchal.
Simply declaring “war” on religion is not the solution however unless you have a valid substitute: solid, viable, secular alternatives need to be more clearly defined. These can probably only be evolved gradually.
“psychological and neurocognitive warfare” equals politics (including religion).
Huh? Do you want to run that one past me again. Off the top of my head, the last major expansion of the Empire was the Dacian campaign of … T… T… Trajan (braincell needs lunchtime coffee ! ), giving us the present day country of Romania, whose language (Romanian) is very definitely Romance in it’s structure and vocabulary. The thick end of a century later, Hadrian pretty much accepted that the Empire had reached the maximum they could manage and built border walls in Britannia, Syria (Roman province name – may not be present Syria), and fortified the Rhine.
Then a century after that (and one or more persecutions of the Abrahamic religions), came the first Emperor who converted to Christianity. And even he wasn’t the last Pagan Emperor.
In what sense did any Abrahamic religion contribute to “defining” the Roman Empire?
“In what sense did any Abrahamic religion contribute to “defining” the Roman Empire?”
What I said was
“the Romans used it [Abrahamic religion] to define Europe”.
The Byzantine Empire which persisted until the 15th century was effectively the Eastern Roman Empire, even if Hellenised. The Italian Renaissance helped shift focus back to Eurocentric Rome.
In the Greek, pre-Roman period the concept of Europe (possibly originally a Phoenician idea) was more Mediterranean-centric, looking also towards the Middle-East.
If the Romans hadn’t earlier adopted Christianity as its official religion, it’s questionable whether the Abrahamic religions would still exist, at least to the extent of their current dominance.
By the end of the Byzantine period, Europe was effectively a recognisable entity looking outward, partly defined by its religion, albeit having undergone schisms and reformations.
It is often said that the Catholic Church is the last vestige of the Roman Empire (as it’s also said that the Anglican Church is the Conservative Party at prayer).
The point I was proposing is that religion remodels itself to fit or mirror the geo-political requirements of the time. Evidently too, there is an interplay or equilibrium, religion also affecting political views and events in its turn.
Hope you had an enjoyable coffee.
Clearly one of your kookier followers, PCC(E).
Adapting or mutating to survive – well, we can leave the mutation out of consideration as it’s not generally considered a voluntary action. But adapting to survive in a hostile or uncomfortable environment is a very sane response.
Which confusion probably says more about the inside of your correspondent’s head than the outside world.
I agree that it is better not to engage the author.