There are degrees to which I might lament an individual’s need to believe absurd things. For instance, I have absolutely no tolerance or sympathy for people like Kevin Wirth who are actively attempting to foist their dipshit ideas onto those who neither want them nor need them. Whatever he believes personally is no concern of mine, even though he’ll always distort to debate to make it seem as if we atheists are out to rob them of their precious faith.

On the other hand, there are Christians I know and love that believe the same bunk yet retain the good sense not to impose it on me or my kids. My in-laws all go to church regularly, pray for the most mundane of wishes to come true, post scripture on every available surface and listen to that insufferable Christian music that gets stuck in your head until you can rid yourself of it by listening to actual music. They know I’m an atheist and they’ve never once treated me any differently. I’m lucky, I suppose, given what they could be like, but its still regrettable that they waste so much time, energy, money, and emotion on nothing. I don’t know how else to feel but sorry for them.

I don’t have anything in my comment policy against stating facts.

I do have an overall rule that you have to be contributing to the conversation. So a long litany of facts about Kevin would probably be in violation, just because at some point it becomes too depressing.

My alma mater! Go UF!

Hey, Parrot Lover, that’s my alma mater too! Go Gators.

Class of ’89.

Did fundamentalism create the unique brain scan, or did the unique brain scan create the fundamentalism?

Good question. I still have the best of the online articles about his research that came out last year. I’ll have to read it again.

I’ll send you my email via your blog. If you’d like to read the article, I can send it to you.

I can’t feel pity for them, though. Salvific exclusivism is the line of demarcation for me. Once they tell me I’m going to hell – that’s it, discussion is over.

Fuck them. If you can feel sorry for them, you’re a better man than I am.

Because I certainly wouldn’t want to do that.

There’s a body of evidence now suggesting a neurological basis for fundamentalism. There’s a fellow at the University of Florida named Heilman who’s been doing some research – brain scans and such – and he thinks it originates in the prefrontal cortex.

My alma mater! Go UF! Maybe he can fix Tim Tebow of his fundieness.

Anyway, this is interesting research. I am guessing he won’t be able to answer the causation question, though. Did fundamentalism create the unique brain scan, or did the unique brain scan create the fundamentalism?

Ron. Don’t you think you’re being just a little bit hypocritical here? You accuse me of not allowing folks like you to comment, and that I’m not up to letting you have your little academic freedom feed. “He can’t handle an open and free debate.”

Right.

Soooo….I guess this means anyone can comment on your blog now, Kevin? Really, don’t deflect Ron’s valid criticism of your site by accusing him of that which you yourself are guilty.

I know its hard for you to wrap your unschooled mind around this, but whenever you engage in disingenuous semantics like this and pretend that it all has something to do with the validity of that which you support, normal people with an operating brain can only conclude that your ideas are bullshit and that you’re not worthy of intellectual engagement. You are excluding yourself from the debate by your open disdain and disregard for the standards real scientists must abide by. You may truly believe that you and your ID cohorts are being treated unfairly by evil, secular scientists. I, however, will charitably assume that you are not that stupid and are merely engaging in willful dishonesty to further your sinister goals. In either case, a rational person can only conclude that you have nothing to offer in the way of intellectual enlightenment.

That’s why we love you so much, Kevin. You validate everything this site is about!

No, I have not forgotten your shameful behavior at all. You have posted a total of 32 comments on this blog. Of that entire number, I have only deleted one, and that was not for its content or its message. It was deleted solely because it violated my comment policy, which is clearly stated, publicly viewable, and applies equally to everyone who leaves comments here.

If I were censoring your comments because I disagreed with them, then why have I left every single one of your other comments on this site?

And let’s do a simple comparison. You have 31 comments on this site. How many comments have you allowed anybody to post on your blog? How many comments in total have you allowed onto your blog? Oh, that’s right! ZERO!!

You appear to be unable to cope with a level playing field such as this one, and only feel comfortable when given special dispensation. This is exactly the same treatment you are demanding for all of your so-called “Darwin skeptics” and “Darwin doubters” and “academic freedom fighters”. You’ve got nothing, so rather than actually produce something meaningful and earn your seat at the table, you just whine and pout and stomp your feet and act like the world is oppressing you. You are demanding not only a seat at the table, but one that is immune from scrutiny by the rest of the world. That is what you require, because you lost the seat you once had when the world looked and saw you had nothing.

Right.

I seem to recall that YOU deleted an entire post I left here on your site a few months ago. Oh. Guess you musta forgot about that part, eh?

You are *such* a moron!

He’s certainly welcome to do so, which is more than we can say for his blog. Kevin won’t let anyone comment at ARN. He can’t handle a free and open debate. How about it, Kevin? Where’s the “academic freedom” to disagree with something you’ve published over there? Oh that’s right. “Academic freedom” is yet another fake controversy that you invented to hide your nonexistent theory, nonexistent data, and nonexistent peer review.