Tag: atheism

Running, running

After having already announced he will no longer debate Creationists, apparently PZ Myers felt it necessary to explain, yet again, why he will not be debating me at any point now or in the future:

Who is Vox Day? He’s a recipient of wingnut welfare, a pretentious nobody who had a rich and rotten crook for a father and who writes cheesy fantasy novels in between penning cheesy political discourse. I’m not some bigshot in my field, but I can recognize an ambitious nobody with nothing to offer, so no, I won’t ever be debating that clown.

What an astonishing surprise! I find it totally indicative of his characteristic laziness with regards to facts that Paul Zachary should assert I am a recipient of “wingnut welfare”, as if that was relevant anyhow. First, it is public knowledge that I had a record contract, a music publishing contract, a book contract, a national syndication contract, and three different million dollar game contracts before I turned 28. None of these had anything to do with Daddy’s computer graphics hardware company, which I left after two years of working there after college. I never needed any welfare, and unlike Paul Zachary, I never lived off the taxpayer either.

Those who like to imagine my father’s investment in WND had anything to do with my column being published there are clearly finding it convenient to forget that I was nationally syndicated by the syndicate arm of the San Francisco Chronicle, that bastion of wingnuttery, five years before I wrote my first column for WND.

What the butterfly collector is too stubborn to accept is that his continued evasion of my two challenges on the existence of gods and evolution will always haunt his intellectual credibility as a would-be spokesman for atheism and scientific materialism. I have heard from numerous atheists who find his intellectual cowardice to be more than a little troubling given his usual tendency to create conflict rather than to avoid it. And he has handed an out to every single individual he ever hopes to challenge in the future. Why should they debate a nobody like him, a clown who isn’t even a bigshot in his own field?

As for the PZ Myers Memorial Debate, we are still in search of an atheist to champion the argument that the logic and evidence for the nonexistence of gods is stronger than the logic and evidence for the existence of gods. It is certainly informative to see how many atheists do not appear to believe they are able to effectively make this case; in light of this, many Christians may find this to be a useful tactical approach when confronted by aggressive atheists in the future. This tends to confirm my previous observations that while atheists like to challenge the beliefs of others, they are very ill-prepared, and in many cases downright unwilling, to defend their own. So, if you want to shut them up, simply go on the attack. They’ll run away with alacrity.

When the criticism of my WND columns on Pharyngula was first brought to my attention, I referred to Paul Zachary as Pharyngurl because I genuinely thought he was a woman on the basis of the arguments he was presenting. Years later, it is highly amusing indeed to see that he still runs like a girl.

The PZ Myers Memorial Debate

Since we have learned that the Fowl Atheist, Paul Zachary, has given up the art of debating Creationists, (and no doubt numerous Christians will have to remind him of this when he calls into a radio show and attempts to ambush them), it appears we shall have to find another atheist with whom to debate the topic I suggested three years ago. Hence this announcement of the first PZ Myers Memorial Debate, dedicated to the short-lived, but inglorious debating career of our favorite community college butterfly collector. I’m sure we all recall how beautifully he ran; Paul Zachary’s reaction to a challenge reminded me of Usain Bolt’s to the sound of a starter’s pistol.

Of course, a debate requires an opponent, so I’m interested to know if there is an atheist who would like to contest the assertion that there is not only substantial evidence for the existence of gods, but that the logic and the evidence in support of the existence of gods is superior to the logic and the evidence for the nonexistence of them.

This will be a written debate. Each party will simultaneously submit an initial statement of no more than 1,500 words for the other party to critique, and both parties will have one week to respond to the other’s initial statement with a critique of no more than 2,000 words. Whoever the judges determine to have won the first round will have the choice between writing the next post or replying to the first-round loser’s next post. There will be five rounds, after which one side or the other may concede or simply withdraw, or continue if both parties wish. The second to fifth rounds will be limited to 3,000 words.

If you happen to be interested in opposing the assertion, please put your name forward along with any credentials you might deem relevant. I’m also interested in three judges, one Christian, one agnostic, and one atheist, so please put your name forward if you would like to be a judge and believe you are impartial enough to focus on the quality of the arguments. If multiple atheists wish to debate, I will post their names and encourage a discussion among them in order to allow them to select the strongest candidate.

I’m also interested in hearing recommendations on a scoring system. I was thinking of having the judges each award up to 5 points on each exchange, but perhaps someone will have a better idea.

Anyhow, it would be impossible to put up a worse showing than the Fowl Atheist, so if you’re interested, do let me know.

Darwinist demands Darwinian litmus test

In other news, Roger Clemens today announced that “throwing like a girl” should disqualify a politician from the presidency.

A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

Richard Dawkins again demonstrates that he is an unmitigated moron. Perry may be an “uneducated ignoramus”, but Dawkins is nothing more than an educated one. But what is always amusing is his narcissistic myopia. The entire world is in the midst of an economic meltdown that threatens the global financial system, so naturally he is very, very concerned that the next U.S. president must be a True Believer in the Cult of Darwin.

If Dawkins actually cared about science, he would be enthusiastically supporting a snake-handling fundamentalist who believed the world was created exactly 6,000 years ago so long as said Creationist was cognizant of economic reality, which none of the current presidential candidates except Ron Paul happen to be. The ongoing Great Depression 2.0 will do far more damage to science than an outright ban on the teaching of evolution in the public schools ever could.

The fact is that neither the president nor anyone else actually needs to know a damn thing about evolution or the intrinsically unscientific principle – it is based on logic, not science – that is “natural selection”. Even biologists who are performing cutting edge work in genetic science don’t necessarily need to know anything about either. Almost no one does.

Moreover, Dawkins is a liar. He lies, and he knows he lies, when he says: “Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science.” Let’s see the scientific experiment that demonstrates that “fact”, then see it replicated three more times for good measure. Other scientists can manage this effortlessly, so why can’t Mr. Dawkins? Because, obviously, evolution is not a fact – which Dawkins admits in his most recent book – nor is it anywhere nearly as securely established as a plethora of scientific hypotheses. And that is a fact. An actual, verifiable one.

The Cult of Darwin must be getting desperate indeed if they are resorting to attempting to pass off outright lies in this manner. Moreover, three years after getting spanked on his embrace of the stupid Red State argument, Dawkins still clearly knows nothing about the American political system. It is not the Republican Party that depends upon the uneducated vote, but the Democratic Party, as CNN exit polls have shown after the 2008, 2004, and 2000 presidential elections.

“Voters with postgraduate schooling were only 25 percent more likely to vote for the Democratic Party presidential candidate in 2004 while those who did not complete high school were 90 percent more likely to identify themselves as Democrats. Since there are 75 percent more Americans who never completed high school (16.4 percent of adults over twenty-five) than possess an advanced degree (9.4 percent), this means that despite their reputation for being the party of the most highly educated, a Democrat is nevertheless more than twice as likely to be someone who has dropped out of high school than an individual with a master’s degree.”
– The Irrational Atheist, pp 18-19

Dawkins concludes: “The ‘evolution question’ deserves a prominent place in the list of questions put to candidates in interviews and public debates during the course of the coming election.”

Absolutely it does. I would LOVE to see it given a prominent place in the debates. Because wouldn’t it be amusing to see the look on Dawkins’s face when all the Democrats he admires stand up and deny evolution in perfect lockstep with all the Republican candidates! And it would be an excellent method of keeping those potentially deadly atheist utopians out of high office.

The myth of the atheist martyr

Although the movie has apparently come and gone without so much as registering a blip with anyone, Armarium Magnum’s detailed demolition of the Hypatia legend is still worth reading.

While Sagan is the best known propagator of the idea that Hypatia was a martyr for science, he was simply following a venerable polemical tradition that has its origin in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

“A rumor was spread among the Christians, that the daughter of Theon was the only obstacle to the reconciliation of the prefect and the archbishop; and that obstacle was speedily removed. On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the Reader and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames.”

Like Gibbon, Sagan links the story of the murder of Hypatia with the idea that the Great Library of Alexandria was torched by another Christian mob. In fact, Sagan presents the two events as though they were subsequent, stating “[the Library’s] last remnants were destroyed soon after Hypatia’s death” (p. 366) and that “when the mob came …. to burn the Library down there was nobody to stop them.” (p. 365)

In the hands of Sagan and others both the story of Hypatia’s murder and the Library’s destruction are a cautionary tale of what can happen if we let down our guards and allow mobs of fanatics to destroy the champions and repositories of reason.

This is certainly a powerful parable. Unfortunately, it doesn’t correspond very closely with actual history.

It is interesting how often atheists accuse Christians of believing fairy tales, considering how they are obviously prone to concocting their own. Is it projection or merely an ironic coincidence? And this is also a useful reminder that a lack of belief in God is not necessarily tantamount to believing unquestioningly in science while remaining completely innocent of history.

Mailvox: A poem by Little Dick

Every now and then, people ask me why I bother engaging with evangelical atheists. I trust this email, quoted verbatim and in its entirety, should suffice to answer that question. It would appear that Little Dick Harris is attempting to convert the world to atheism with poetry. His magnum opus is entitled “Woo”.

Woo

The Christian’s Jehovah, the Almighty God,
is a capricious and cantankerous sod;
he’s a jealous, vain, and incompetent fraud,
with the morals of a sadistic tribal war lord.

For homophobia, misogyny, and genocide too,
that old Bible Bogey is the god for you.
He’s his own father, and his son, and a ghost too,
but there’s even more ridiculous woo.

Christians claim their god, in his Empyrean lair,
is omniscient, omnipotent, beneficent and fair;
but, with the problem of theodicy,
that dogma is Christian idiocy.

The Jew’s Yahweh, a wrathful old jerk,
set Jews strict rules on when to work,
how to dress, and what to sup or sip,
and giving baby boys the snip.

Myths of Bronze Age, goat-herding nomads,
metaphorically have them, by the gonads.
The Moslem’s Allah, a fierce great djinn,
demands under ‘Islam’, literally, ‘Submission’.

Apostasy is treated just like a crime;
they’ll threaten to kill you, to keep you in line,
and if you dare draw Mohammad in a comic cartoon,
there’ll be riots and killings from here to Khartoum.

Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist,
Zoroastrian, Baha’i, Mormon, and Scientologist,
Confucianist, Shintoist, and Taoist too,
Spiritualist, Wiccan, and the New Ager into woo.

Yea, verily, those of each and every religion,
are mired in the miasma of superstition.
So, why should yours be the one true faith,
in the magic of a phantasmagorical wraith?

Belief, without evidence, is just plain crazy,
ignorant, stupid, or thoughtlessly lazy.
Life derives no purpose, at a theistic god’s direction;
evolution really happens, due to Natural Selection.

I have sent you this poem in the hope that you will read it and realize that some people find your religious beliefs to be unwarranted and absurd. When I was a small boy, still in short pants, I understood that there was no supporting evidence for religious beliefs, and therefore, such beliefs had no basis in fact. Later, I realized that religion was a tool for controlling people. Religion should be a private matter, because when it gains political power, as with any ideology, it becomes a tool for oppression. Please consider the benefits of rational thought over superstition and wishful thinking.

Oh, I read it twice, as a matter of fact. The first time in disbelief, the second time in awe. My first coherent thought was that the poem doesn’t scan well, commits six rhyming infelicities, reveals the usual ignorance of actual Christian theology, repeats numerous talking points that have been repeatedly shown to be false, and consists of crude doggerel that is never going to be mistaken for Dante or Yeats. My second thought was that we have a real candidate for the 2012 Richard Dawkins Award on our hands! Science can inspire art after all!

My third thought, of course, was that the poet is not one who would recognize a “rational thought” if he spent the next ten years having Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes read to him before bedtime. And then, only then, I began to laugh….

One of the many amusing things about this email is the way that Little Dick openly admits his lack of faith is quite literally childish. “When I was a small boy, still in short pants, I understood that there was no supporting evidence for religious beliefs, and therefore, such beliefs had no basis in fact.” I don’t know about you, but I tend to find this assertion to be just a little less than credible. What are the chances that, “as a small boy still in short pants”, Little Dick Harris had been able to peruse all of the available evidence that tended to support religious beliefs, whether one uses the term “evidence” properly or not?

Of course, his poem is a colorful piece of evidence demonstrating, that like every other evangelical atheist, Little Dick is still an emotional and intellectual child throwing a non-stop temper tantrum because the adults simply will not pretend to believe in his imaginary world.

UPDATE – But wait, there’s more! A follow-up email has arrived:

Vox, you ask, “What are the chances that, “as a small boy still in short pants”, Little Dick Harris had been able to peruse all of the available evidence that tended to support religious beliefs, whether one uses the term “evidence” properly or not?”

Zero, of course. What a stupid question. It isn’t necessary to read all of it, or, as I’ve subsequently discovered, any of it. Other than, that is, to find out that it’s empty, eristic hermeneutics, & sciolistic casuistry.

Little Dick noticed that the sort of miracles documented by Bede, clearly, were no longer taking place. Occasional claims for somewhat more mundane miracles, usually involving apparitions or healing, were obviously without good supporting evidence. As Hume demanded, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, & it was always lacking. By the age of twelve, it was plain to me that everything that I was aware of that happened in the world, & the universe, was potentially explicable in terms of natural processes.

Half a century later, I’ve never once doubted that, except for the realization that we may never be able to explain everything. Supernatural explanations add nothing of real value to our understanding. All that they can do is satisfy the wishful thinking of credulous individuals.

There you have it, from the mouth of the Poet Laureate of Rational Atheism. You don’t need to examine ANY evidence at all in order to reach a rational conclusion that satisfies the self-styled materialist. And thus the Worm Ourobos devours his own tail and we finally reach the glorious conclusion of rational materialist epistemology.

Those well-educated atheists

There goes another atheist claim. It turns out that the areligious in Britain are the least likely to go to to college:

A study of more than 13,000 young people found that 77 per cent of those who described themself as Hindu at the age of 15 went on to higher education, compared with 45 per cent of Christians. Some 63 per cent of Sikh teenagers and 53 per cent of Muslims went on to study at university, but just 32 per cent of those who had no religion at 15 undertook higher education.

This is, of course, further evidence in my point about the two churches of atheism. I expect that the college attendance rate of High Church self-identified atheists will be higher than the Christian rate, and perhaps even as high as the Hindu rate. It’s all about the restrictions on the group selected. No doubt the rate of Hindu college attendance is rather lower in India, where most Hindus actually live, than in Britain, where the Hindus are a small and self-selected group.

This is why it’s always necessary to pay attention to the Atheist Dance. When they want to talk up their numbers, they refer to Low Church “no religion”. When they want to talk up their objective qualities, they refer to High Church self-identified atheism. It’s rather like making a distinction between Christians and Catholics. The latter is a subset of the former.

A failure of atheist cheerleading

Apparently Miss Myers didn’t get the message that all books written by New Atheists are to be blindly defended, tooth and claw, rather than criticized for the flaws that are apparent to any intelligent reader. I was both impressed and vastly amused by her scathingly dismissive review of Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape, as it was even harsher and more contemptuous than my own review of it.

So, to summarise:

1. Utilitarianism is right, but not any more justifiable than anything else. But who cares what other people think, anyway?

2. Because utilitarianism is right, we don’t have to be loopy post-modernists.

3. Science can tell us what makes us happy. Here’s a smattering of scientific studies about the brain.

Why in the hell do they give out book deals so easily? This book isn’t about convincing others, or providing novel ideas. It’s about pandering to atheists with very little knowledge of philosophy and ethics and an abundance of arrogance, telling them science is with them, and then reiterating how immoral people who like FGM and throwing acid in girls’ faces are and how we don’t have to listen to them because We Are Right. This is nothing but a convoluted rehashing of utilitarianism that still falls to the same old criticisms, and an immense waste of time unless you really like a good ignorant circlejerk.

It would certainly be interesting to see Miss Myers review Sam Harris’s two previous books, to say nothing of the other books I addressed in The Irrational Atheist, with the same skeptical eye. Regardless, it appears she will make a more challenging champion of atheism than her father ever has because she is willing to pay attention to the words as written and to think for herself rather than to simply parrot centuries-old talking points and froth at the mouth like some sort of performing bearded clown monkey.

It appears that I wasn’t the only one to notice the similarity in our conclusions concerning Harris’s book. Unbelievable, PZ’s daughter is the female version of Vox Day. What’s next? anti-feminism, repeal of women’s right to vote, border control and Austrian economics?

We can always hope that sweet reason will triumph, even if we harbor few expectations of it. And certainly, the intrinsic problem of utilitarian consequence pointed out by Miss Myers is not dissimilar to the famous Austrian explication of the impossibility of socialist price calculation. I must say, however, that she was perhaps a little unfair to Sam Harris in failing to give him credit for at least attempting to make a necessary case that so many other atheists have avoided, and in some cases, even claimed to be irrelevant. Ironically, given my past suspicions about him, Sam Harris may in some ways have turned out to be the most intellectually honest of the evangelical atheists. His blithely candid arguments are at least relevant, even if they reliably reveal his carelessness and inability to construct a valid argument on solid foundations.

Atheists in Gamma Hell

I know, I know, it’s simply astonishing news that women hate atheists. Even atheist women don’t like them:

Jen has slammed Richard Dawkins for some comments here. I can confirm that those comments were actually from Richard Dawkins. I also have to say that I agree with Jen and disagree with Richard. Richard did make the valid point that there are much more serious abuses of women’s rights around the world, and the Islam is a particularly horrendous offender. Women have their genitals mutilated, are beaten by husbands without recourse to legal redress, are stoned to death for adultery, are denied basic privileges like the right to drive or travel unescorted. These are far more serious problems than most American women face.

However, the existence of greater crimes does not excuse lesser crimes, and no one has even tried to equate this incident to any of the horrors above. What these situations demand is an appropriate level of response: a man who beats a woman to death has clearly committed an immensely greater crime than a man who harrasses a woman in an elevator; let us fit the punishment to the crime. Islamic injustice demands a worldwide campaign of condemnation of the excesses and inhumanity of that religion.

The elevator incident demands…a personal rejection and a woman nicely suggesting to the atheist community that they avoid doing that. And that is what it got. That is all Rebecca Watson did. For those of you who are outraged at that, I ask: which part of her response fills you with fury? That a woman said no, or that a woman has asked men to be more sensitive?

I think reasonable men will be quite capable of both opposing Islamic fundamentalism with vigor and refraining from driving away their godless colleagues with petty harrassment, colleagues who may well be even more fervent and dedicated to our common cause of promoting equality all around the world.

Look, it’s hardly news that atheist guys are creepy gammas, for the most part. That’s why they are much less likely to get married or have children. Even the small number of atheist girls don’t like atheist guys; the ludicrous internecine kerfluffle was kicked off by a male atheist hitting on female atheist in an elevator. He actually invited her for coffee, which is the “lesser crime” to which the Fowl Atheist refers.

Dawkins, who as a scientific celebrity surmounted his natural gamma status some time ago, was naturally confused by all this extravagant feminized foolishness, and pointed out how stupid it all was. This caused more hissy fits to be directed his way; Dawkins, being the coward that he has shown himself to be on numerous occasions, was naturally quick to crumble.

Now, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to be hapless with women to be an atheist, one need only look to Athol Kay, that godless Stud of Studs, Mr. Five Thousand Nights and a Night his own bad self, to see otherwise, but it is quite clear that it helps tremendously. No wonder they’re so furious at God. He created all those lovely women with those beautiful breasts and they aren’t even allowed to even talk to them in elevators.

The explosive growth of atheism… in prison

Atheists often like to erroneously claim that Christians are more likely to be imprisoned than atheists. Both Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have made this bizarre, and irrelevant, appeal to atheist “morality”. But these arguments are inevitably based on nothing substantive, and more importantly, they are belied by actual prison statistics. While the USA doesn’t keep comprehensive statistics related to religion, the UK does, and it’s here that we can see the actual facts of the matter.

What is interesting is that it appears atheists have become significantly more criminal since I found the 2002 statistics when writing TIA. (Since then, the UK Ministry of Justice has gotten its online act together and it’s much easier to find the relevant annual statistics.) In the seven years between 2002 and 2009, the number of imprisoned High Church Atheists rose 475%, from 0.17% of the England and Wales prison population to 0.84%. That’s still fairly small, of course, but it’s worth noting that it is a larger percentage of the prison population than is represented by any of the following religions and denominations:

Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Quaker, United Reformed Church, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Christian Scientist, Coptic Christian, Greek/Russian Orthodox, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seven Day Adventist, BaHai, Jain, Pagan, Rastafarian, Scientologist, Zoroastrian.

That’s only a partial list, as I left out about an equal number of more obscure denominations and religions. It was also the second-fastest rate of growth, surpassed only by the agnostic population, which increased 812% to 0.64% of the total prison population.

However, as I pointed out in TIA, the correct comparison between Christians and atheists is not between all Christians and self-identified High Church Atheists, but rather between all Christians and all No Religion atheists, less agnostics. It is easy to demonstrate why this is so, the inevitable Atheist Dance notwithstanding, given the correct definition of an atheist as “one who believes that God does not exist” rather than “one who calls himself an atheist”. This assertion is supported by the action of the atheists at the British Humanist Association and their census campaign, which asserts that is an individual’s identification with a religion – or presumably, identification with a specific appellation – irrespective of the extent of their religious belief or practice is not the appropriate concept to measure. And while one could argue that “no religion” is not perfectly synonymous with “belief that God does not exist”, it is safe to assume that most, though not all, no religion individuals are practical atheists even if they are not inclined to call themselves atheists. It is also in keeping with the practice of Richard Dawkins, the British Humanist Association, and many vocal atheists to consider “no religion” a form of atheism.

The reason this matters is that is the Low Church atheists of the No Religion variety who make up 33.1% of the prison population, more than twice the 15% of the general population. (The 15.1% number is from 2001 and will likely be around 20% in the 2011 census; I will update the numbers accordingly when they become available.) The statistical overrepresentation of no religion atheists in prison is surpassed only by Buddhists (0.3% general, 2.2% prison) and Muslims (2.8% general, 11.9% prison).

So, keep this in mind the next time that an atheist attempts to claim that atheists are more moral or less criminal than Christians. All they are doing is cherry-picking the most intelligent subset of the atheist population and comparing it with the entire intelligence spectrum of the Christian population. Since low IQ tends to correspond highly with criminal behavior and imprisonment, it should come as no surprise that self-styled Atheists are less likely to be found in prison than no religion atheists.

Mailvox: the double whammy

This may be well be my favorite critical email ever received, as KW manages to not only highlight several of my assertions about the more militant atheists, but to underline, italicize, and bold them as well:

I have been reading assorted texts on the internet and I came across a post that you made a long while back entitled “The socially autistic atheist”. I was particularly interested in your articles because I happen to be both an atheist and an aspie.

It seems to me that the purpose of these articles is to use an ad hominem attack against atheists by calling them “socially autistic” or saying that they have “autistic psychopathy”. You never refute or even address the arguments that these “socially autistic atheists” have in regard to religion or god. In essence, I believe that you are just being a giant asshat troll.

In a previous article you wrote this: Here’s an object lesson that perhaps might be capable of penetrating the skulls of even the most autistically psychopathic. (1) Do you dislike being described as a socially autistic asshole? (2) Would you like it any more if that description was scientifically proven to describe you accurately? (3) Would you consider it polite and/or socially acceptable for me to insist on always describing you to others as an autistic psychopath were this proven to be an accurate description of you?

I assume that this was a reaction to certain aspie atheists spreading the idea that belief in god is a delusion, or that people who believe in god are deluded. well to answer your questions:
1. No of course not. I think that an important distinction to make is that it is an attack on WHO I AM rather than an attack on WHAT I BELIEVE.
2. You are asking a question about a hypothetical scientific description where that hypothetical scientific description would not be scientific. It would however be a logical fallacy (an appeal to authority in this case).I’ll go ahead and say no.
3. No, and I would likely react violently to such discrimination.

Whenever an atheist says that god is a delusion, that is not an attack on any person. It is an attack on an idea. Unlike when you call me a “autistic psychopath”, which is very clearly an attack on who I am as a person. There is no moral equivalence for these statements. TL;DR you are a despicable person who resorts to fighting your intellectual opponents with ad hominem attacks.

I would have expected that you would have already been shamed into making an apology about statements such as this. You are not an expert on autism and you should shut your stupid fucking mouth in my opinion.

With disgust and contempt,
[KW]

Naturally, I replied with all the kindness and moderation for which I am so justly known, considering that the poor lad has about the same chance of ever landing a girlfriend that I have of being named the premier of China. Let’s face it, I couldn’t not respond. I mean, how could I possibly resist the irony of being lectured on the niceties of correct social conventions by an atheist… an atheist with Asperger’s.

My dear boy,

I absolutely believe your claim to be both an atheist and an aspie. Only someone so intellectually handicapped would be so spectacularly stupid as to claim “You never refute or even address the arguments that these “socially autistic atheists” have in regard to religion or god.”

The fact that I have written and published an entire book on the subject that does precisely what you claim I have never done would appear to be sufficient to invalidate your assertion. You can even download a powerpoint slideshow that summarizes some of the more commonly heard arguments from the likes of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris should you be so inclined. So, congratulations. In ten years of writing controversial op/ed columns and being the recipient of the most vehement forms of criticism from the Council on American-Islamic Relations to godless Sciencebloggers, you have managed to write the single most ignorant email I have ever received. You do Asperger proud.

In respect of your handicap, I shall refrain from pointing out the additional errors you have committed in your response to my questions, although I do invite you to contemplate the moral basis for what you claim is a lack of moral equivalence between the various statements.

With no little amusement,
Vox

And now it’s time for the moral of the story. If you happen to suffer from atheism, Asperger’s Syndrome, or autism, the chances are exceedingly high that your ideas concerning what is and what is not socially acceptable behavior are not going to be in accordance with the societal norms of the neurotypical majority. Therefore, your offers to help others better understand proper social etiquette, however kindly intended they might be, are virtually guaranteed to go badly awry.