After I criticised PZ Myers and others for smearing the atheist movement and individual atheists, PZ responded by falsely accusing me of defending and providing a haven for rapists, and he has now refused for ten weeks to withdraw and apologise for this defamatory smear.

In this article I will analyse, quote from, and link to examples of PZ’s years-long pattern of smears that led to my original criticism. PZ promotes himself as The Happy Atheist, but his writing conveys more anger and causes more hurt and harm than happiness.

There are now so many smears that each can hide behind the others, as PZ drags us on a desensitising race to the ethical bottom, many levels below the basics of civil discourse, evidence, fairness, empathy and justice. Ironically, any one of PZ’s smears, if viewed on their own, might stand out as worse than the suffocating tangle of smears that has evolved as he gradually lowers our expectation of decent behaviour.

Despite this, you could excuse many of these smears by interpreting them charitably, particularly if they were made by somebody who is normally charitable, who has been misinformed or is writing in anger, and who either substantiates them or apologises and changes their behaviour. But the sheer relentlessness of PZ’s smears, and his reluctance to apologise, brings as a wider problem their cumulative impact.

PZ Myers’ unethical behaviour is harmful to the atheist and skeptic movements, and to the cause of social justice, as well as being hurtful and unjust to the individuals that he smears. It also discredits the American Humanist Association and the IHEU, who gave him a Humanist of the Year award in 2009 and International Humanist Award in 2011, and it disrespects other Humanist awardees who try to promote ethical rather than unethical behaviour.

1.1 Scum at the top and thuggish jerks leading assholes

1.2 Personal smears against living and dead individuals

1.3 Shanking and stabbing, and morons and lunatics

1.4 Abuse and threats and smears by PZ’s commenters

1.5 Summary

2.1 Sources: Scum at the top and thuggish jerks leading assholes

2.2 Sources: Personal smears against living individuals

2.3 Sources: Personal smears against dead individuals

2.4 Sources: Shanking and stabbing and other violent imagery

2.5 Sources: Using ableist language despite saying he opposes it

2.6 Sources: Abuse and threats by PZ’s commenters

2.7 Sources: Personal smears by PZ’s commenters

1.1 Scum at the top and thuggish jerks leading assholes

Let’s start with the big-picture smears. PZ Myers has said that the scum has risen to the top of the atheist movement, that it is burdened by cretinous reactionaries, that sexist and misogynistic scumbags are more than a fringe phenomenon, and that if you don’t agree with Atheism Plus you are an Asshole Atheist. He has also agreed that the atheist movement has a white supremacist logic.

PZ has also said that he has officially divorced himself from the skeptic movement, that the skeptic movement has attracted way too many thuggish jerks, especially in the leadership, and that the communities of atheists, science-fiction writers, gamers, scholars of literature, skepticism, politics, and philosophers are rife with sexist scumbags.

These are serious smears. They indiscriminately attach themselves to countless decent people around the world who are selflessly working to create a more ethical, secular, rational, compassionate world based on reason and social justice. They go way beyond allegations of individual bad incidents, and falsely suggest systemically corrupted communities with scum rising to the top and thuggish jerks leading assholes.

1.2 Personal smears against living and dead individuals

PZ Myers has also unjustly smeared many individual people by name. He regularly places very uncharitable interpretations on somebody else’s comments or behaviour, describes this misrepresentation using emotive and cruel and defamatory language, then continues to smear the person even after they have clarified what they meant.

Some examples: PZ has said that Richard Dawkins seems to have developed a callous indifference to the sexual abuse of children, that many Catholics are quite gleeful that Richard has embraced the same moral relativism that they use to rationalize crimes against children, and that he is now writing off Richard because he has been eaten by the brain parasites.

PZ has said that Sam Harris is racist in his thinking (he also says that we all are, but he only mentions it with regard to Sam). He agrees that Sam spouts and promotes Islamophobia under the guise of rational atheism, and that it is past time that the darker aspects of Sam’s worldview receive attention.

PZ has instructed Neil deGrasse Tyson on how to properly apologise for inaccurately paraphrasing President Bush, while PZ himself misrepresented what Neil had written. And when a shop owner publicly and sincerely apologised for putting a sign on his door saying that atheists were not welcome, PZ responded: “No. Fuck him to the ground, let him be a lesson to others.”

PZ has said that Russell Blackford is a lying fuckhead, Rosetta scientist Matt Taylor and Bill Maher are assholes, Bill Maher’s date at an event was candy to decorate her sugar daddy’s arm, Jerry Coyne doesn’t have to work at drama, rage and recrimination, and Peter Boghossian is upset because he has got no imagination and his opponents are more creative in their insults than he is.

PZ has said that Ann Marie Waters is a nutter, and that Abbie Smith and and her coterie of slimy acolytes are virtual non-entities, and that he will not participate in any conference in which Abbie is a speaker. He later changed his mind about this while he was criticising Richard Dawkins for not speaking at the same event as Rebecca Watson.

PZ has said that DJ Grothe, then of the James Randi Foundation, appears to be an evasive jerk, that Ron Lindsay of the Center For Inquiry seemed more interested in appeasing an obsessed gang of manic, moronic anti-feminist spammers and countering the purpose of his own conference, and that Thunderf00t is a dishonest scumbag and a slimy goatfucker.

PZ has called Irish blogger ZenBuffy a narcissistic wanker, after she said she has experienced mental illness. And when a pseudonymous poster on another website made a bad taste joke about PZ (for which she has apologised), PZ named her on his blog along with details of the medical institution where she works, and urged his readers to contact her employers about her.

PZ has published allegations of criminal behaviour against named individuals, and has allowed his commenters to repeat these allegations. He has also said that Ben Radford is a revolting narcissistic scumbag, and that his lawyer is J. Noble Dogshit who has a bit of a reputation as a rabid dog, and everyone hates to go up against him and deal with the slime.

After I criticised PZ for smearing the atheist movement and individual atheists, he responded by falsely accusing me of defending and providing a haven for rapists, and said that the evidence for this was that some people who comment on my blog also post on the Slymepit forum. He has repeatedly failed to substantiate or apologise for this defamatory smear.

PZ Myers’ smears even follow dead people to the grave.

He has said that Charles Darwin was a sexist asshat, that Richard Feynmann was a reprehensible asshole, that Ayn Rand was a crappy and awful person, and that Christopher Hitchens was a bloodthirsty barbarian and a club-carrying primitive whose politics were vile. He described Robin Williams’ suicide as the death of a wealthy white man dragging us away from news about brown people, and added that he should have been more rude about Robin Williams because asking him to have been nicer about the dead famous guy is missing the point.

1.3 Shanking and stabbing, and morons and lunatics

PZ Myers regularly employs violent imagery, often related to the use of knives, and he uses ableist language despite his own stated opposition to it. This gradually lowers our expectations of civil discourse and compassionate ethics, particularly when coming from a winner of Humanist awards from the American Humanist Association and the IHEU.

Some examples: PZ has encouraged his commenters to draw their knives and flense certain comments so thoroughly the dispassionate ass is feeling the pain in every nerve ending. He has joked about Rebecca Watson shanking Thunderf00t in the kidneys, and about himself stabbing Christians and pitching people off a pier.

He has joked about a priest and human rights advocate dying in a ballooning accident during a charity fundraiser, and said he will dream of shooting other priests out of the sky from an aircraft. He has said he would rather debate William Lane Craig in writing where he can stick a knife in the bastard and twist it for a good long while.

Despite his own stated opposition to ableist language, PZ regularly insults people using phrases associated with various handicaps. For example, he has implied that people would assume that sexists and misogynists are a bizarre handicapped aberrant group, and he regularly insults people by calling them idiots, morons, demented and lunatics.

1.4 Abuse and threats and smears by PZ’s commenters

PZ Myers has said that he judges other bloggers by their commenters. But PZ has previously encouraged his own commenters to invite people to shove a rotting porcupine up their nether regions. They in turn have told people to put a three week old decaying porcupine dipped in tar and broken glass up your arse sideways, to fuck themselves sideways with a rusty chainsaw, red-hot pokers and a rusty coat hanger, and to go die in a fire, seriously.

More recently, PZ’s commenters have said that Christopher Hitchens was just a loud, racist and sexist atheist, that Sam Harris is a sickening, appalling, dreadful, frighteningly ignorant racist, that Richard Dawkins is a racist misogynist piece of shit who thinks child molestation doesn’t count unless there’s rape or murder, that if he’s not actually a child molester he’s dangerously close to wearing the uniform of one, and that he and his rape cheerleaders can fuck a power socket.

PZ did not remove any of these smears, but he did ban a commenter who defended Richard Dawkins, saying: “Goodbye. We don’t need your petty resistance to any dissent from the sacred position of your great heroes around here. Fuck off.”

1.5 Summary

PZ Myers’ unethical behaviour is harmful to the atheist and skeptical movements and the cause of social justice, as well as being hurtful and unjust to the individuals that he smears. It also discredits the American Humanist Association and the IHEU, who gave him a Humanist of the Year award in 2009 and International Humanist Award in 2011, and it disrespects other Humanist awardees in their promotion of ethical behaviour.

Despite there being so many smears that each can hide behind the others, as PZ drags us on a desensitising race to the ethical bottom, we should try to look at each of his smears as if they were isolated allegations, to be judged on their individual merits based on principles of evidence, fairness and justice. If we do that, we will realise the harm that PZ is causing, and the need to actively dissociate our work from the damage caused by his smears.

SOURCES

2.1 Sources: Scum at the top and thuggish jerks leading assholes

“We’re seeing a crisis of confidence with atheist leadership, too… Atheists already had an image problem with the name, but somehow the scum rose to the top and worked hard to make it worse.” Source “Atheism is still growing… but a lot of the early adopters and drivers of the culture are abandoning it in disgust, looking for something that isn’t burdened with the cretinous reactionaries.” Source “One question I got at my CFI-DC talk was about the prevalence of sexist/misogynistic scumbags in the atheist movement — aren’t they just a minority? And my answer was that I don’t know what percentage they are, but that it’s a mistake to dismiss it as a fringe phenomenon..” Source (About Atheism Plus) “And if you don’t agree with any of that — and this is the only ‘divisive’ part — then you’re an asshole. I suggest you form your own label, “Asshole Atheists” and own it, proudly. I promise not to resent it or cry about joining it. I just had a thought: maybe the anti-atheist+ people are sad because they don’t have a cool logo. So I made one for the asshole atheists – A* ” Source (PZ agreed with Sikivu Hutchinson that)“Engaging in science fetishism without a social justice lens merely reproduces the white supremacist logic of the New Atheist Movement…” PZ wrote: “Unfortunately, I can’t write a rebuttal… because she’s right, damnit.” Source “I officially divorce myself from the skeptic movement… So don’t call me a “skeptic”. I’ll consider it an insult, like calling a writer a stenographer, a comedian a mime, a doctor a faith healer, a scientist a technician. I’m out.” Source “I feel that way about movement skepticism — skepticism is an essential element of our toolkit, but the movement has attracted way too many thuggish jerks, especially in the leadership, who want to deny every progressive effort that some of their members want to make.” Source “OK, the communities of atheists, science-fiction writers, gamers, scholars of literature, skepticism, politics, and philosophers are rife with sexist scumbags.” Source

2.2 Sources: Personal smears against living individuals

PZ has written about the use of language:

“Words have power. Guns also have power; is unregulated access to guns the best path to a free society? We’re engaged in that experiment in the US right now, and I can tell you…no. Similarly, we have to recognize that words must be used responsibly. Speech can do great harm. Words can enlighten and educate, but they can also oppress and mislead. As humanists, we must appreciate the importance of truth, and do what we can to stop the promulgation of lies.” Source

Despite this, PZ has written the following smears about individual people:

(About Richard Dawkins) “He seems to have developed a callous indifference to the sexual abuse of children… I’m sure many Catholics are quite gleeful that Richard Dawkins has now embraced the same moral relativism that they use to rationalize crimes against children.” Source (About Richard Dawkins) “Well, I’m going to have to write off Richard Dawkins now. He’s been eaten by the brain parasites.” Source (About Sam Harris) “He is racist in his thinking, but then, we all are… the absurdity of thinking it’s not racist if it targets yourself.” Source (PZ agreed with Glenn Greenwald’s opinion of Sam Harris) “Harris and others like him spout and promote Islamophobia under the guise of rational atheism… it is past time that the darker aspects of their worldview receive attention.” Source (About Neil deGrasse Tyson) “NO. That’s not how you respond. Allow me to help out, Dr Tyson. Here’s how it should go:” Source (Hemant Mehta on the shop owner’s apology) “Andy, the owner of Gelato Mio, just posted a more extensive apology to atheists on Reddit. This isn’t just PR-speak. I think he genuinely feels bad about what he did and wants to make things right. You can decide if he accomplishes that.” Source (PZ on the shop owner’s apology) “No. Fuck him to the ground, let him be a lesson to others.” Source (About Russell Blackford) “I think he’s just a lying fuckhead at this point.” Source (About Matt Taylor) “The memorable image of the day of the Philae landing will always be This… Good work, Matt Taylor, Rosetta… It’s a demonstration that people can do amazing things, and that some of them are assholes. Powerful image, that.” Source (About Bill Maher) “When you let assholes be the public face of atheism, it’s no wonder we have a bad reputation.” Source (About Bill Maher) “I do not defend Bill Maher; I can’t stand him, I didn’t care for his movie, and think he’s a great example of the awful atheist.” Source (About Bill Maher’s date) “He also showed up with an extremely attractive young woman who could have been his daughter, or even granddaughter, but was actually his date. She was pleasant to talk to, quite unlike her sugar daddy, and actually bothered to engage the table briefly in light conversation. But you could tell that Maher’s ideal woman was candy to decorate his arm in public.” Source (About Jerry Coyne) “He really doesn’t have to work at drama, rage, and recrimination — his commenters do a fine job of that already, with his tacit permission.” Source (About Peter Boghossian) “I’m beginning to think that his real beef is that he’s got no imagination, and his opponents manage to be far more creative in their insults than he is.” Source (About Ann Marie Waters) “the nutter who’s demanding special attention be paid to one kind of domestic violence” Source (About Abbie Smith) “For instance, I will not participate in any conference in which Abbie Smith is a speaker. If I’m invited, and later discover that she is also invited, I will politely turn down the offer. I could find myself spending a lot more time at home, which wouldn’t be bad at all, except that she doesn’t get invited out that often, and her coterie of slimy acolytes are virtual non-entities, too.” Source (About DJ Grothe) “DJ Grothe appears to be an evasive jerk who rejects the solutions found in every other organization.” Source (About DJ Grothe) “If you’re writing to the JREF, I hate to tell you this, but the publicly available address routes email directly to DJ Grothe’s desk, and you know what he’ll do to them.” Source (About Ron Lindsay) “a director who seemed more interested in appeasing an obsessed gang of manic, moronic anti-feminist spammers who’d been flooding the twitter feed, and countering the purpose of the conference.” Source (About Thunderf00t) “Yes, we want to make Thunderf00t a pariah in the atheist movement, and for good reason: he’s a dishonest scumbag.” Source (About Thunderf00t) “Seriously, l’affaire Thunderf00t ended on our side once the slimy goatfucker was kicked out.” Source (About ZenBuffy) “While I do think Zenbuffy is a narcisstic wanker — it’s not about you at all, lady, it’s about the guy who floods me with nonstop hate mail..” Source (About Ben Radford) “My god. What a revolting narcissistic scumbag.” Source (About Ben Radford’s lawyer) “His lawyer sent all this to me some time ago, as part of his effort to intimidate me, so I’m pretty sure this maneuver is just fine with his lawyer, J. Noble Dogshit or whoever.” Source (About Ben Radford’s lawyer) “Apparently, Radford’s lawyer has a bit of a reputation as a rabid dog…there’s been some difficulty getting representation because everyone hates to go up against him and deal with the slime.” Source

2.3 Sources: Personal smears against dead individuals

(About Charles Darwin) “Darwin, sexist asshat” Source (About Richard Feynmann) “being really good at physics or any other intellectual endeavor is not an excuse for being a reprehensible asshole.” Source (About Ayn Rand) “Are you saying she wasn’t an atheist? No. I’m saying she was a rather crappy person… that the general term encompasses some awful people does not mean we’ve been given a pass to be awful ourselves.” Source (About Christopher Hitchens) “on some subjects he was warm and humane and a true child of the Enlightenment. And on others, a bloodthirsty barbarian and a club-carrying primitive.” Source (About Christopher Hitchens) “his politics were vile, he was a cheerleader for war, his ‘solutions’ for problems in the Middle East were little more than excuses for genocide.” Source (About the suicide of Robin Williams) “thank God that we have a tragedy involving a wealthy white man to drag us away from the depressing news about brown people… Boy, I hate to say it, but it sure was nice of Robin Williams to create such a spectacular distraction. No one wants to think the police might be untrustworthy.” Source (About a woman making a racist comment) “She seems nice. She looks like the kind of person who would have laughed at nanu-nanu” Source (About the suicide of Robin Williams) “I’m mainly feeling that I should have been more rude, because asking me to have been nicer about the dead famous guy is completely missing the point.” Source

2.4 Sources: Shanking and stabbing and other violent imagery

(About his blog, 2014) “Pharyngula is a hostile, aggressive place: we run hot, and I like it that way. It’s not going to be a good place for some people. And that’s perfectly OK, too…It’s a difference between this site and McEwan’s. McEwan would rather provide a sanctuary for the oppressed. I’m more interested in rhetorically arming and inflaming them.” Source (About his blog, 2012) “The Absolute Law. I AM THE BOSS, and don’t you forget it. I have sole and absolute power here; I can ban you, I can destroy your comments, I can shut down whole threads. I am a being of caprice; I don’t have to justify anything I do… I will do as I will to make this place the kind of party I want to attend, and that’s all that matters. This law supercedes all other rules.” Source (About his blog, 2011) “This is a rude blog. We like to argue — heck, we like a loud angry brawl. Don’t waste time whining at anyone that they’re not nice, because this gang will take pride in that and rhetorically hand you a rotting porcupine and tell you to stuff it up your nether orifice…” Source (About drawing knives and flensing) “I hate that faux-Vulcan shit so many skeptics and atheists love to pull, but I’m not forbidding it — I encourage the commentariat here to instead draw their knives and flense it so thoroughly the dispassionate ass is feeling the pain in every nerve ending.” Source (About shanking Thunderf00t) “Now Rebecca Watson shanks him in the kidneys and mocks him cruelly. Trigger warning for sad ex-paragon of anti-creationism being publicly exposed as a moral cretin.” Source (About going for a meal in Seattle) “The watchword for the evening is “casual”. Pleasant conversation. Friendly discussion. No pressure, no worries. Don’t show up to pick a fight or we’ll pitch you off a pier.” Source (After a priest died when carried away by balloons in a charity fundraiser) “I think this is my favorite newspaper headline yet… I am imagining a day when every priest in the world stands smiling beneath a great happy bobbing collection of many-colored balloons, and they all joyously loft themselves up, up into the sky… This will be my new dream. It will bring a smile to my face as I fall asleep. And as long as I’m dreaming, I’ll imagine myself with an ultralight aircraft and a BB gun, buzzing above a great Sargasso of wind-gathered balloons.” Source (After watching God’s Not dead) “I’ve got to start carrying a knife now. Just so all you Christians know, if I’m in a fatal accident, and I’m lying in the street dying, and you’re not running over to stop the bleeding or otherwise physically help me, and you try to pull that prayer-and-conversion shit on me, I’m going to stab you. I’ll have nothing to lose, and you sure as hell don’t deserve to continue living. I don’t like violence, but I will make an exception for this one possible circumstance.” Source (About William Lane Craig) “I’d rather get his words down in writing, where I can pin him down, stick a knife in the bastard, and twist it for a good long while. Longer and with more detail and rigor than is possible in a verbal tussle.” Source

2.5 Sources: Using ableist language despite saying he opposes it

PZ’s commenting rules include

“No splash damage. I have no problem with insults (except, not in the Lounge!), and encourage everyone to use vigorous and creative language. Except…I insist that you be precise and focused. Stilettos, not shotguns. There are classes of insults that rely on broad spectrum stereotypes to be insulting: racist, sexist, ableist, ageist slurs don’t just hit your target, they hit everyone in that group.” Source

Despite his stated opposition to ableist language, PZ regularly insults people using phrases associated with various handicaps.

(About sexism and misogyny) “it’s too common, and the people who are doing it aren’t some bizarre handicapped aberrant group, they’re people you wouldn’t look at twice if you saw them in the street.” Source “How about a new rule: no idiots allowed in our parks?” Source “This moron is basically saying that if most of the kids’ education is decently done, then they can afford to throw a few state-mandated lies at them.” Source “But no matter how progressive the state might be, we’re still afflicted with horrible, demented people who run for office.” Source Animal rights protesters are “bloody-minded lunatics.” Source “Nevada seems to have more than its share of idiots.” Source The US legal leadership “consists of brain-damaged, narrowly literal-minded amoral morons” Source Michelle Bachmann is “one lunatic among a field of demented dwarfs.” Source The Republican Party is “the fringe party of lunatics, demagogues, and irresponsible lackwits.” Source “In Indiana, it’s not just the lawmakers who are idiots — it’s the media, too!” Source “some moronic writer for the Telegraph who uses stereotypes to make generalizations.” Source “there are now demented dingbats… implying that I’m some kind of hypocrite, because I have in the past been subject to an abortive false accusation.” Source Judge Scalia is a “dangerous lunatic.” Source “new idiots join in to scream about how you’re violating free speech, and besides, the same morons just come crawling back under new pseudonyms…” Source “That student from Hell” who complained about her supervisor: “Who looks demented now?” Source Bill O’Reilly is a “raving lunatic’” Source

2.6 Sources: Abuse and threats by PZ’s commenters

When PZ falsely claimed that I defend and provide a haven for rapists, and that the evidence was that people who post on another Internet Forum also comment on my blog, he added:

“Where did I say he should delete comments? I said I judge him by the company he keeps.” Source

I don’t agree with that approach. But what happens if we judge PZ by the company he keeps, meaning the commenters on his blog? Well, PZ encourages his commenters to be abusive. For example:

“I have no problem with insults (except, not in the Lounge!), and encourage everyone to use vigorous and creative language. Except…I insist that you be precise and focused. Stilettos, not shotguns.” Source “This is a rude blog. We like to argue — heck, we like a loud angry brawl. Don’t waste time whining at anyone that they’re not nice, because this gang will take pride in that and rhetorically hand you a rotting porcupine and tell you to stuff it up your nether orifice…” Source

This has resulted in comments such as the following being published in the past:

“Go fucking die in a fire, Lion. And, no, I am not fucking kidding.” Source “So John, if you are one of them, please pick up a dead porcupine and use it to floss your bowel. Then go die in a fire. Slowly.” Source “You are a silly, ignorant, gobshite, tone trolling, vacuous, dumbfuck. You can put a three week old decaying porcupine dipped in tar and broken glass up your arse, sideways. – This is going to take something larger than the average porcupine.” Source “However, the porcupines are still located to the left of the door as you leave. Grab on. Shove it where it will do the most good (to the entire world), and then go die in a fire. Slowly.” Source “Oh, fuck olvlzl sideways with a rusty chainsaw. I am so tired of that prat.” Source

2.7 Sources: Personal smears by PZ’s commenters

“Saying Hitchens is racist is a statement of fact, not ‘failing to stick up for free speech’… He was just a loud atheist, and unfortunately quite a racist and sexist one.” Source “The easy answer to PZ’s last two questions is that Sam Harris is racist.” Source “That’s because you’re a sickening, appalling, dreadful, frighteningly ignorant racist, Harris.” Source “If no one else is going to say it I will… Someone needs to tell Dawkins that if he’s not actually a child molester he’s dangerously close to wearing the uniform of one.” Source “Are you fucking kidding? A racist misogynist piece of shit who thinks child molestation doesn’t count unless there’s rape or murder? That’s not “fucking good”. We can do better.” Source “Dawkins and his rape cheerleaders can fuck a power socket.” Source

PZ did not remove any of these three smears about Richard Dawkins, while he banned another commenter, who was defending Richard, by telling them: