That Crazy Robert Lanza!

Today's Too Hot For HuffPo:

It seems that some moderator at Huffington Post has taken a special personal dislike to me. I don't know how else to explain how strictly my comments have been moderated lately. The latest example from this morning: a comment on this article, entitled "Does the Past Exist Yet? Evidence Suggests Your Past Isn't Set in Stone" by Robert Lanza, a stem-cell researcher who lost his mind about a decade ago and came up with a "theory" of biocentrism, which holds that life created the universe, not the other way around. (That screaming sound you hear? That's Werner Heisenbergin his spinning grave, screaming in pain from the migraine that such a gross misinterpretation of his uncertainty principle is giving him.)

Okay, so here's my comment, the one which some little creep abusing his or her little bit of power decided was not fit to appear on HuffPo. Brace yourseves. Clutch your pearls, ladies. Gentlemen, have the fanning implements and smelling salts handy. Here it comes. Oh, the horror:

"This all kind of reminds me of peek-a-boo games with little children, when the little child thinks you've disappeared when he covers his eyes. Egotistical conflation of perception with reality. Infantile."

Postscript:

Okay, it's not just me: this perfectly lovely little gem from my HuffPo friend KrautMan was also removed, a comment on the same article. Lovely, and funny, not to mention prescient:

"I have a feeling that this post will have get published and yet has been vanished as if it never will be existed..."

So Stupid it Makes Me Mad

This article is so stupid that it makes me mad.

"the scientific metaphor known as string theory[...]the Biblical metaphor known as Genesis[...]"

I don't whether to laugh, cry or try to start a class-action lawsuit against somebody on behalf on common sense.

"what the Bible has been telling us through metaphor since 8,000 B.E. (Before Einstein)"

Wow. Would that be 8000 YEARS before Einstein?

Does the author use dates metaphorically too? Or does he have a whole separate groovy lecture where he demonstrates that Genesis is actually 8000 years old?

"Open yourself once more to the mystical message in the first so-called "day" of Genesis 1:"

I wish more people would open themselves, in the face of poota reconstuctionist intellectual history like this, to the plain truth: that the various authors of the various stories which were eventually woven together into Genesis meant them literally, that most Jews continued to believe Genesis literally for a very long time, that most Christians still did until pretty recently, and that the brightest ones from Augustine to the present -- their numbers have increased explosively over the course of the last century -- who have been blathering on about its "metaphorical," "mystical" meaning (I've been trying for a long time to find out just exactly what mysticism is. I'm coming to the conclusion that it is babble which confused religious people find soothing.) are not on to the real, hidden meaning of Scripture, but are just too embarrassed, subconsciously usually, to see it all, the book, the religion, the whole silly situation, honestly for what it so very plainly is: primitive hoo-hah, pre-scientific attempts to understand a frightening world, and prefer to engage in something on a par with seeing ducking and horsies in puffy white cumulus clouds, rather than fully let go their religious beliefs. (Religious, spiritual -- poTAYto, poTAHto...)

Postscript: here is another Too Hot For Huffpo! comment I made about the same article. Didn't make it past the moderation:

"For me, sometimes the mystical pseudoscience gets so out there that it becomes fascinating, like a fictional trainwreck in a slapstick comedy movie.

"At the same time, though, it makes me angry, because stuff like this and Lanza and Whatsisname, the classical-musician-turned-non-physicist [Ervin Laszlo], and the Naked Archaeologist and the Bible Code and Dan Brown, is so successful, at the expense of actual competent science and history and archaeology. And the thing is: the intelligent stuff, the actual science -- expanding the term "science" to include history. Why does the English-speaking world sometimes not do this? -- is not only based on real evidence and intelligent reasoning, it's actually more interesting than the stuff these crackpots dream up."

Too Hot For HuffPo!

This comment, on this article, didn't make it past the moderators at Huffington Post:

"This article goes in the 'Religion and Science: A Contemporary Discussion' folder, and some articles which actually present a scientific point of view, like Victor Stenger's most recent contribution to HuffPo, do not. Why not just go ahead and change the name of the 'discussion' to 'Why Atheists are Wrong, and Arrogant, and Mean, and Just Like Fundamentalists, Really' ?

"Truth in advertising, ya know?"

from The Big Book of Bad Ideas

Have you got a plastic squeeze-bottle that you've recycled, filling it with something else after its original contents were gone? Take it with you everywhere you go one day and show it to everyone you meet -- and I do mean everyone: family, friends, co-workers, passersby. Tell everyone how great you think your squeeze-bottle is, but don't tell them what you do with it now; instead, say, "It's my friend!"

Do you have a friend with whom you'd like to be more than just friends, but you don't know how to take that next step? (I mean a human friend, of course, not that squeeze-bottle! Ha-ha-ha!) Here's what you do: in your next face-to-face conversation, interrupt every one of his or her sentences with a very loud and high-pitched screech. If you're not already good at screeching, practice at home first, with all of your windows open. If one brief screech, a second long or less, is enough to make your throat sore for half a day or more, you're on the right track! Cupid's on his way!

Does your boss have an office of his or her own with a receptionist? Get two pounds or more of greasy fried chicken. If you don't know of a restaurant that makes it greasy, fry it yourself, and don't drain it! With the chicken in a box or bag under your arm, barge past your boss' receptionist and into his or her office, dump all of the chicken onto his or her desk, shout every rude and insulting thing you can think of about your boss, and punctuate the shouts with the sort of screeches we discussed in the last paragraph, and when you can't think of anything else to shout, tickle your boss vigorously in the belly and sides and under his or her armpits. This will show him or her that you're a bold and original thinker with a lot of great ideas! Next bonus time will be a happy time for you, my friend!