Quote of the week #24 – Jeremy on anti-abortion dissembling

“You pretend pictures of the former are representative of the latter, when they’re obviously not. But who cares, right? You’ve got your barrel to push, and you’ll use any horrible tactic you think you can get away with.”

(Jeremy Sear, 2008)

Jeremy nails this one. But sadly, despite how easily the deceitful memes of the anti-women religious right (faux pro-life) are demonstrably false, people are still going to prattle on, spreading them amongst the willingly credulous.

Which raises another issue covered this week in the local blogosphere. The lying by the fundamentalist Christian right about the shenanigans surrounding the expulsion of PZ Myers from a free screening of Expelled, that he had previously registered for (in accordance with the conditions of entry).

The lie runs that PZ Myers was trespassing and had to be forcibly removed, which of course is not true. He registered just like any other person in the audience (including Richard Dawkins who wasn’t expelled from Expelled) and was removed upon the order of the producer of the movie after he was recognised.

There is something to be learned from all of this. With the exception of the intellectually handicapped or the otherwise easily gulled, in the face of such obvious evidence of deceit, it requires motivated credulity to throw in with the likes of the creationist propagandist and the anti-abortion dissembler.

People who engage in motivated credulity in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary can be summed up more simply of course, in a single word; liar. To be a creationist propagandist or an anti-abortion dissembler, one either has to be profoundly intellectually handicapped, or, and more often, one simply and knowingly, one has to be a liar.

You can split them either way with Hanlon’s Razor, the former functioning as a victim of the latter, the entire fundie knowledge system acting as a delivery mechanism for a damaging and deceptive memeplex.

The former are worthy of your sympathy, the latter your scorn and an absence of respect.

~ Bruce

PS. Hiatus resumes.