The IDF has uploaded a video presentation showing the huge shipment of weaponry from Iran, intended for Hezbollah, that was intercepted this week by an Israel Navy commando force aboard the civilian ship Francop.
It’s interesting that paleo-knuckleheads like Buchanan think the most devastating rebuttal of all to the theory of evolution is that it’s ... just like religion.
Someone went unhinged and shot an abortionist. So what? I mean, it’s a terrible tragedy, but what does it tell us about…well…anything? What conclusions are we supposed to draw? It’s not like abortionists are getting bumped off on a regular basis. The last one of these that occured was 11 years ago, back in 1998. What lessons am I supposed to draw from the fact that some lunatic thinks God told him to kill an abortionist that are in any way substantively different than those I would derive when a crackpot kills his pharmacist because the Venusians sent him a command to do so via the transmitter secreted in his skull?If a crackpot kills his pharmacist, do you suppose there would be thousands of approving comments from right-wingers?
“Intelligent design” creationist Denyse O’Leary interviews Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahya); bug-eyed insanity ensues: Interview with Turkish Darwin doubter Adnan Oktar.
O’Leary calls Oktar’s book The Evolution Deceit: “the most succinct and comprehensive of the critiques of overblown claims for Darwinian evolution that I have ever read.”
Other books by Adnan Oktar include Holocaust Deception and Global Freemasonry. No word from O’Leary on whether she also considers those works “succinct and comprehensive.”
No True Scotsman is a logical fallacy by which an individual attempts to avoid being associated with an unpleasant act by asserting that no true member of the group they belong to would do such a thing.(Via LGF)
The term was coined by Antony Flew, who gave an example of a Scotsman who sees a newspaper article about a series of sex crimes taking place in Brighton, and responds that no Scotsman would do such a thing. When later confronted with evidence of another Scotsman doing even worse acts, his response is that no true Scotsman would do such a thing, thus disavowing membership in the group "Scotsman" to the criminal on the basis that the commission of the crime is evidence for not being a Scotsman. However, this is a fallacy as there is nothing in the definition of "Scotsman" which makes such acts impossible.
A modern example may be found at the would-be Conservative encyclopedia, Conservapedia. The founder of the site, Andrew Schlafly, has repeatedly used this fallacy to defend his personal concept that Conservatives, by definition apparently, do not practice deceit. When confronted with examples of deceit on the part of Conservatives, he routinely disavows that these individuals are Conservatives at all, on the basis that Conservatives do not practice deceit. He instead assigns them to the group liberal, regardless of evidence to the contrary. The use of this fallacy is underlined by the fact that prior to revelations of deceit, the same individuals would have been hailed as good Conservatives.
Phrases such as "un-American", "unChristian" or "inhuman" are widely used in politics and media to distance onself from a subject, defining them as outside the bounds of what the speaker considers to be truly 'American', 'Christian' or 'human' behaviour. These phrases strongly suggest the No True Scotsman fallacy, since the use, for example of "un-American" to describe specific political activities by some American citizens implies some special definition of "American" beyond mere nationality.
Pat Robertson urges his drones to jam the phone lines of the Department of Homeland Security, to scream about the “right wing extremist” report, wasting DHS resources and possibly blocking important calls.Bonus crazy Pat Robertson quote:
Then he says that "someone down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left winger, or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question."
"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."More of his off-the-charts nuttery here.
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