Sunday, October 03, 2010

When They Talk About Truth, Watch Your Wallet

Why is it whenever an organization starts talking about "truth", it's a good bet they're going to be spouting the most incredible lies?

To give just a few examples:

- the 9/11 "truth" movement

- Creation Truth Ministries

- the Discovery Institute's "truth about the Dover trial"

So it was no surprise for me to get e-mail from Turkish creationist Harun Yahya called "An invitation to the truth". It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

This message was filled with statements such as "The Chinese people and other nations will also rejoice under the protection of the Turkish-Islamic Union" that seem to be taken directly from some old Stalinist literature.

Or this one: "They should write down little notes that explain the invalidity of evolution". Maybe they should write down little notes explaining that Harun Yahya is a raving imbecile.

Just imagine what an appalling, grotesque, and totalitarian world it will be if morons like this get more power.

7 comments:

Miranda said...

> "Why is it whenever an organization starts talking about "truth", it's a good bet they're going to be spouting the most incredible lies?"

I agree. Other key words also lead to a similar bet, such as "openminded," "free-thinkers"

Examples:

Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics
Atlanta Freethought Society

Takis Konstantopoulos said...

One thing that should be pointed out is that whereas the set of non-open-minded atheists/agnostics is nonempty, the corresponding set of, say, creationists is void.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Miranda:

Why not back up your claim by providing "lies" advocated by the Atlanta Freethought Society?

Otherwise, you're just a dishonest bore.

Miranda said...

Not lies, but examples of a lack of freethinking. After comparing a few of these "free-thinking" sites, they look pretty much all the same to me. Echo-chamber thinking is more like it.

Oh, I could've included this one, too:
http://my.democrats.org/page/group/DemocratsforTruth

and just to be fair:

"Republicans for Truth"
http://homepage.mac.com/gebryan/blogwavestudio/LH20040823153827/LHA20041028195511/index.html

Anonymous said...

The very first google results on controversial topics have a disturbing tendency to be lies:

Truth about global warming: the first result was the "junk science" site.

Truth about vaccines: the first result was an anti-vaccination site.

On the other hand, searchingTruth about AIDS had a legitimate site as the first result.

Miranda said...

I actually agreed with the conclusion here, go figure:

ravingatheist.com/2004/09/non-partisan-atheists-for-truth/

F. Andy Seidl said...

Reminds me of a favorite quote...

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson