(Part I)
I write, reader, not to praise CSIcop*, certainly, but to nuke it from orbit! Such should be its woeful, yet well-earned, wage! Verily, friends and neighbors, it doesn't deserve a fair fight or the waste of the energy expended on it to obliterate it. For so egregiously betraying the spirit and letter of its own tenants, it should effortlessly get what it gave... easily reap what was sown... then be bulldozed into the ground and summarily urinated upon. I understate.
...Remains, CSICOP must be stamped out, ultimately... relegated to its own denunciation, finally, even as it would stamp out others, itself, ironically enough... Even as it would condemn, denounce, and invalidate as from "on high" those more innovative and courageous than itself, and perform that condemnation, denunciation, and invalidation with all the authorization, encouragement, and support required from a conflicted and contrived lapdog mainstream... Even as the mainstream fails ultimately!
...From orbit, my brothers and sisters! I say unto ye!
...Any good they do shall be interred with their treacherous bones, if it please you. Their *evil* shall live on and on. Hence their obliteration and anticipated demise and my earnest funerary calls...
Hyperbole and histrionics? No. Only my disgusted so theatrical admonition provoked by CSIcopian arrogance and sneering hubris, other ritual mouth noises from mal-religionists, scientistic (sic) and otherwise! It chaps the buns.
...And I must caution the reader at this point that it is not Skeptics with whom I have a problem... or that I am one of those credulous mooks merely bored with the *rationality* ardent CSIcopians pretend to unctuously dispense... No!
True skeptics are never the issue, reader! They are in comparison persons to be revered above all others, actually! They are welcome company ... They are honored team members... They are boon companions...!
Skeptics... are the most interesting of us. Skeptics are the most knowledgeable of us! Skeptics are the ones to instruct us the most!
Consider. "Doubting Thomas" was the most honored of the disciples because he doubted, reader! Only he was allowed to touch the corporeal body of the risen Christ! Doubt is rewarded as reflex denial must ultimately incur a loss, I suspect.
No. Skeptics are not to be confused with scurrilous skepti-bunkies, ponderous "pelicanists," or insipid "CSICOPians..." (scurvy klasskurtxians?)... the antagonists regarded in the rest of this piece!
...This collection of fringe flogging front-men and intellectually constipated imps of niggard anti-science just iterated are the new ignorance actually! Consequently? A righteous pox on CSIcop, that Committee for the Serially Insentient Commitment of Obdurate Persons! Could I be plainer?
See, lately fed by a popularized neo-conservatist (sic) 'right' of your garden variety fascist, CSIcopian ranks swell with the even more deceitful and cross-purposed! Their smug smirk of corn-fed intellectual contempt works its unctuous way through our cyberspace like an unhealthy toxic mass worried uncomfortably through an internet's electronic bowels.
The preceding simile is not inapt. A pox upon them, again, for measure.
Why? To wit: they are not what they vociferously if duplicitously portray themselves to be! ...Always enough for explanation as it turns out! By omission, commission, or planned imprecision? They lie! ...For our own good of course. ...It's always for "our own good..."
Yes. Gleefully and with malice aforethought, they provide for and nurture the informational void your betrayed and hapless "rank and file" can only attempt to miserably fill (...even as these are marginalized for same!). Dutifully, speciously vacuous CSIcopians then complacently demonize these hapless further for their, many times, sincere (if credulous!) attempts to "address", "tackle", "attend to"... ...fill that unnecessary void worrying them... ...A void CSIcop has founded, actually cultivates, and busily facilitates... one comes to see!
Yes, functioning as a mechanism for social niggards and a sociopathic corporate elite they've fraudulently set themselves up as a clearing house, reader, a miserly and over-employed reductionism masquerading as hard-nosed rationality and impartial science! Stow that!
Science fraudulently employed as the default arbiter of that which it blithely refuses to investigate in the first place! There is the real lunacy, forgetting the affront to science invoked in name only!
To wit, CSIcopia populates its ranks with intellectual motes of insufficient and counterfeit sentience, lettered ringers of dubious veracity (irrelevant doctorates and "B" grade entertainers) to tout a party line! Moreover, they cloak themselves in an unjustified and too proud mantel of a convenient lap-dog science only engineered to grind the corporate axes they patently contrive to grind!
On the subject of UFOs, as my focus regarding my problem with them, my once adored Penn and Teller can just piss off, consume fecal matter and expire. Hang on... let me reset my hyperbole circuit breaker...
...But sincerely, reader, Axes of denial, Axes of denunciation, and Axes of unbrave refutation... ...Mendacious Axes well ground, I add, and then fatuously brandished like virtuous swords in an astonishing display of arrogant hubris... disguised as outraged and righteous scientific piety! A Pox, I say!
Enough recrimination and cast aspersion! Details!
Astoundingly, tepid reductionists proclaim a six-point covenant with the "unwashed" and "ignorant" masses supporting them (and actually despise I suspect), establish this thin veneer of trustworthy credibility and *credulity assuagement*... and then publish their *balanced rational worldview* in that six-point plan of stated intent: each point a subject of this essay!
Even if presently non-current, that six-point plan has not earned the slightest repudiation from CSIcopia, reader, or been amended in any form, when it is abundantly appropriate to provide said repudiation... and so remains a cheesy fraud, along with a very subsequent brand change, revealed! What else?
To wade right in... like most frauds that aforementioned six-point plan is anything but balanced, actually. It is a canted mess of reflex denials, character assassinations, and bald duplicities I'm provoked to contend.
Let's look at that six point covenant, then, and examine each of its *points* in turn...
CSICOP's first point is especially stalwart sounding, reader... fairly ringing with lofty ideals... nearly oozing "good intentions, high standards, and best practice..."
"1. Maintain a network of people interested in critically examining paranormal, fringe science, and other claims, and in contributing to consumer education..."
One almost hears little horns of the arriving cavalry but this writer is immediately compelled to examine any *demonstrated* integrity of this aforementioned *network* of implied efficaciousness... to come up with patent bupkis! Founded by Dr. Paul Kurtz, a man on record as being constitutionally unable to perceive "any difference between a UFO and a traditional leprechaun," this *network* seems, at first blush, to be a paragon of refined education, advanced experiential acumen, and incisive brainpower!
No, no, and no. Predictably, as with everything else regarding CSICOP, appearances can be deceiving. Consider the unrelated and immaterial "Doctor's" degrees of many of the CSICOPian principals, as in the case of Dr. Joe Nickell. Consider the ridiculously canted, assumptive and NON-networking remarks he's made (among significant others, Dr. McGaha springs to mind) as if it were Nickell (an English major!) who would proscribe what was and what was not acceptable to think about, for the rest of us.
Dr. Nickell, sadly, is typical of the kind of person closely associated with CSICOP. His bias, worn on a damp sleeve, is obvious in word and deed! What *service* is provided with his anti-network of canted explications, intellectual cowardice, and same from fellow immaterial persons?
The (overwhelmingly male and so affected) persons involved with CSICOP are, demonstrably, a puddle deep lot decidedly incapable of any balanced examination, presumably... if for no other reason than that there is so little investigation actually going on, and right under their noses, too! Indeed, the word investigation is a component of the very acronym they use to identify themselves (forgetting that it is publicly touted that "investigation is the middle name" of your garden variety CSICOPian...), when there is so very little of same!
Verily, it certainly refrains from same! There IS no investigation! CSICOP, instead, prefers to portentously pronounce on what is acceptable thinking in the form of scientific sounding dictates of dubious veracity, disingenuous assumptive-ness, and biased incompleteness. They don't even LOOK, remember, their minds are made up going in!
At its head... and as typified by adherents near that head, CSICOP is instead really, only a conflicted *aggregate entity* furiously driven only by the denial of its hostile and mal-educated ideologues! Indeed, repressive regressives, they are themselves what they warn against!
It is not a network of credible and balanced persons interested in critical examinations of anything... anything but its own obtuse agenda, that is. Moreover, their reputation among true skeptics absolves the need for citation, reader! The only person defending CSICOPia is a fellow-traveling CSICOPian.
Paul Kurtz knew Philip Klass was a nut! He said so. That was perfectly acceptable; however, because Klass was Kurtz's nut! Klass was Kurtz's "lap nut."
No. On reflection? CSICOPia is a network only of obstinate denial, conflicted cant, and obvious bias! Consider, with MUCH of the highly strange it is entirely possible to credit... UFO cases like:
1. Kirtland AFB [11\4\57] 2. Hynek Blue Book Case [5\5\65] 3. Malmstrom AFB [3/20/67] 4. Incident at Redlands, Ca. [Hynek, BB, 2\4\68] 5. Exeter, New Hampshire [9\3\65] 6. Malmstrom AFB [11\7\75] 7. Iran F-4 Incident [9\76] 8. Belgium [1989\90] 9. Illinois, USA [1\5\2000] just to start...
...CSICOPians have not remotely credited a fraction of that which they have mendaciously (if unsuccessfully) discredited, have they! No! Have they ever credited anything save their own inordinately sullen and desultory intransigence? On inspection, no!
This demonstrates their pestilent cant, good reader. Verily, and at the last? The hapless consumer is ill served by this parody of science! This spoof of reductionism! This caricature of Descartes! This lampoon of number and measure!
It's not science, reader, CSICOP typifies, see? It is the insentient, cowardly, and non-progressive worst of a niggard's scientistic (sic) reductionism, only.
The CSICOPian second point is a continuing insult to our aggregate intelligence...
"2. Prepare bibliographies of published materials that carefully examine such claims..."
...And then print them in your own ringer publishing activity at "Prometheus Press," eh? Sincerely, "Careful examination" of paranormal claims is airily abandoned in the production of bibliographies heavily (even admittedly!) stacked with researchers who toe the fundamentalist CSICOPian's party-line. An example?
Since the very beginning (and as typified by the Dennis Rawlins imbroglio over the "StarBaby" paper) any research critical *of* or in opposition *to* that CSICOPian party-liners remains remarkably non-included in these not so efficacious *bibliographies...* or why was "StarBaby" published in "Fate" and not in the "Skeptical Inquirer"? Why can't Dr. David Rudiak get a peer review for his Mogul Work in the same canted CSICOPian rag? Frank Feschino for "Shoot Them Down"? Stanton Friedman for "MAJIC"? Robert Hastings "UFOs and Nuclear Missiles"? Richard Dolan "UFOs and the National Security State"?
Why indeed!
...On to the third point:
The third point would be a lot more funny were it not for the dire implications it makes regarding a complete and balanced research outside the cloistered CSIcop paradigm CSIcopia promotes and stridently insists upon as the default arbiter of the one true "science..."
...Flesh crawls...
3. Encourage research by objective and impartial inquiry in areas where it is needed.
This is rolling-on-the-floor-and-clenching-near-incontinent-cheeks-together laughable! Where can your garden variety CSICOPian not be shown to be anything but tediously subjective regarding every aspect of their conduct... and the corrosive performance of that conduct? Ask anyone credible in their crosshairs. Friedman, Hastings, Feschino, Dolan et sig al.
Where is their *encouragement* possible given their ready character assassinations and reflex research discriminations? Their "blue hare hoaxes" and duplicitous ringer placements? Their campaigns of rigid ideological suppression and bullying sponsor intimidation? Their individual browbeatings, their individual harassments, and their tyrannous individual persecutions? Are these not going on?
How is a person with an alternative thought *encouraged* in such an atmosphere, or in the scurrilous actions of infamous stage-clowns like Penn and Teller who lied to their guests, otherwise misrepresented their own scurrilous intentions, and made all the program participants look like buffoons, nut-bags and public whack-o-doodles? What manner of "Bull-Shit" (Their choice of title!) is that?
CSICOP is far from 'objective', miles away from 'impartial', and, (this writer contends) decidedly not the best choice to decide where 'inquiry is needed.' They perform a treacherous disservice, at best, to suggest that they are otherwise! Laugh in their pompous faces, and then let us move on.
The fourth point is key to the infrastructure of their institutional infidelity practiced in the unctuously earnest transmission of an ignoble and non-progressive CSICOPian meme!
"4. Convene conferences and meetings..."
Oh, the horror... but they do enough of that! Rest assured, reader. They encourage all sorts of little splinter groups to grow up, clone-like, in their image... additional busy little imps to caper around the book-burning fire (...Not that one pilgrim! That's a "Prometheus Press" book!) ... harsh infernos where good reputations get burned at the stake with the bad and where the catechisms of the jealous status quo are solemnly rehearsed in the flickering light and stinking smoke...
No, any resemblance to balanced "conferences and meetings" is dissolved in the Ad Hominem attacks, derisive ridicule, and easy dismissal of the opposition thinker at these *meetings*. Audiences are encouraged to laugh out loud and the laughter provoking ring-master is visibly pleased with the expression of that laughter, it's been reported. Sounds more like a college frat party than a meeting of serious... hardnosed intellectuals.
Clearly—these meetings are *coven conferences* described by some as Scientistic (sic) "Inquisition" assemblies! Their purpose is to dictate thought, proscribe their canted eschatologies, and rehearse their *approved* scriptures, just like the old Catholic enterprise of old, it's been written. All hail Doctors Kurtz and Shermer, our teachers, leaders, and holders of the guiding light! Feh!
The fifth point proves that their intimated *balance* is a self-admitted fraud!
"5. Publish articles that examine claims of the paranormal..."
...Articles galore... And books! Lots of books! Books that shall remain unburned. Clueless books. Books without imagination. Books without courage! Books without vision or scope! Books to coddle and mollify the flat-earth reader with the prosaic and predicable. The reassuring and comforting. The staid and mundane!
Books without depth. Books without novelty! Books without character! Books that celebrate an invalidated and irrelevant status quo!
Moreover, asked previously and answered, reader! "Examination" presupposes investigation, remember... so "Examine" how, given that there is so little (if any) investigation, going on, to support the examination to which they allude!
...Besides, what further needs to be said than that their publishing accomplishments include the intellectually back-sliding screeds of one Kal K. Korff? 'Nuff said?
No. The sixth and final point provokes in me a keen astonishment that a card carrying CSICOPian can ever behold his own reflection in a mirror!
"6. Do not reject claims on 'a priori' grounds, antecedent to inquiry, but examine them objectively and carefully..."
Don't these smirking authoritarians read their own stuff? Are they that credulous themselves to be so disrespectful of the public's attention? What bizarro world must they inhabit? They clearly do what they proclaim they do not.
Reader! "A priori" means:
1. Proceeding from a known or assumed cause to a necessarily related effect; deductive.
A priori, flatly, suggests the exact opposite of a process indeed going where the data might lead—the aspiration of any true skeptical scientist! The history of CSICOP is, again flatly, rich with the direct antithesis of "following the data."
No. CSICOPians are "data pushers," patent cherry-pickers for evidence supporting their contentions and, by admission, dismissive of evidence that doesn't support their contentions! This is widely and competently reported. So, in this sense they are very "a priori" when they very unctuously proclaim... that they are not! None dare call that a lie. I shall.
A priori further means:
2a. Derived by or designating the process of reasoning without reference to particular facts or experience, or...
2b. Knowable without appeal to particular experience.
" *DING*...Another winner, Johnny"! 2a and b are precisely their activity!
The particular experience (or bias) of your friendly neighborhood CSICOPian is very much a factor in their, so-called, inquiry! Claims are measured first with a rubric of: can that claim first be *true* or not! That which is determined to be incapable of *truth*, to begin with (...by dictate of "fishy fiat," presumably!) is removed from serious consideration... and ridiculed! "UFOs cannot exist," first, so any inquiry regarding whether they exist or not, is moot!
"UFOs can't happen... period" (to quote the lovely Dr. McGaha), without regard to conflicting evidence of any type. They make up their minds about a question, and prosecute that, without once validating the question, which, facilitating them, must remain unasked! Outrageous!
CSICOPians are very much a priori in this sense, too. ...yet they say that they are not... See how this works, reader?
Finally. A priori means:
3. [The Determination of something] made before or without examination; which is to say, not supported by factual study!
Excuse me! The preceding is the obvious method of the garden variety CSICOPian, who has made up his mind, "thank-you-very-much," and would prefer not to be confounded with the facts, if you'd please and thank you very much!
=Forget= that this behavior is proclaimed by the concerned card-carrier to be "not so." It remains... a priori describes them perfectly, reader! "A priori," and not "investigation" ...would appear to be their middle name!
Additionally "careful and objective" are only duplicitous malapropisms they employ... words carefully chosen to mask a very real agenda of *think-cloaking*, acrimonious axe-grinding, and rank intellectual fascism, finally!
...My hyperbole circuit breaker didn't even get warm!
Clearly, a reasonable assessment of these preceding six points, then, shows them to be more CSICOPian artful dodge...reader, than stated aims to which one might bravely aspire! They are red herrings scripted to deceive and mislead, not to edify and enlighten!
Clearly, CSICOP's six points of shame are carnival hucksterisms, empty platitudes which contrive to get you into their big CSICOPian tent for the scientistic (sic) revival meeting! Once there, smooth faced scienti-evangelists like (the hugely disappointing!) Penn and Teller, the not-so-amazing Randi, or the bellicose and whiney Dr. McGaha (don't forget the fatuous Dr. Nickell!)... can perform their unbalanced slights of hand!
Yes, reader, it seems these guys, among others, are just slick scientistic-scripture pounding frauds with ulterior motives, in one considered opinion! They front an organization of similar myopic intellectualists, little men who steadfastly assert to the contrived credulous that there is a place for *everything*, and everything (read 'everybody'!) should be in its place!
I see them as spiritless men (fewer women) for a soulless organization as bereft of imagination as it is bereft of creativity, frankly! It's no stretch that they are the nineteenth-century proponents for the new dark ages threatened us in our... 21st century.
Now I'm not a scientist, but a soldier and a poet ...forgetting I was raised by a scientist, been around them all my life, and hold a bachelor of science degree. I have a deep respect, admiration, and appreciation for the rules of science. I can, therefore, call these CSICOPians as I see them, smug proponents of unbrave institutional evil, a scourge of canted intellect, and a hurdle to the rising and advancing of the human spirit—a torpedo for our human potential!
...Still ice cold, that aforementioned breaker!
As with other dark-age producing tyrants of the past, I patiently await the eventual demise of planet CSICOPia and I further anticipate the strident repudiation of their unctuous six point covenant as a bald misdirection and oily obfuscation of their true aims.
Their covenant, finally, is a farce. Verily! The late Steve Allen, a founding CSIcopian, wretches from beyond the grave, I suspect (even as Philip Klass gloats gleefully).
In Part II we wonder that a conjectured speculation on the "true or false" reality of the UFO in an ETH sense might be as specious as it is ludicrous and as mendacious as it is cowardly, and then reflect on the comparative scientific infallibility of Stanton Friedman.
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*...still csicop.com
