Klasskurtxia, Be Not Proud!
by Alfred Lehmberg
No? Is this not fulsomely dictated to any observing individual aspiring to conscience, and abundantly, given even the remotest attention to current events? Is it not true that ALL of our avoidable woes are a result of the choices we have made, always? …Or more to the point, the choices we didn’t make.
Let's forget God's providence. No God will be there to bless us or abandon us. Verily, our existence is all on us, adrift in a creation we can neither define nor truly understand... presently, if ever. This is even as our errant hubris proclaims that it CAN, more or less, define and understand our nature and place in the cosmos!
It remains that "we," those of us who must define that place where "hard rubber meets an abrasive road," are, and have ever been... the providers of our own damnation or salvation... only using thousands of gods we've manufactured... as excuses for our lack of understanding "of all things" under the sun!
We're talking monkeys! What would one expect of us?
This might be what a "secular humanism" is all about! This might be where we discover as a humanity, as a species, that we would be much better served respecting ourselves, investing in ourselves... worshipping ourselves! ...And doing that with all the same humility and humbleness we've extended to thousands of invented deities! Plainly, these dieties, a multitude of gods we only ever manufactured to do our bidding, have done that bidding, perfunctorily, as can be readily observed, anyway! Untestable faith is valueless to a species rising and advancing... it is "hopium." This is forgetting that some of that faith is unethical and criminal. The KKK has faith.
No... we are our own invention, an accident of cosmic nature always, reinventing ourselves, always, to wit! Here we are, and after many hurdles of fate, too! ...This is likely not by the grace of God!
So, back to the ranch! Let's turn our eyes inward at ourselves, then, to regard for a moment a potential and ironic real cause for some of that insipid "cowardice" and "ineptitude" to which we have alluded above.
Enter, the klasskurtxian. Behold and weep!
Oh… he had a noble start. "Critical Thinking" was being cheapened for the masses by the too readily available alternative facts, especially via the internet later on... and too many of the cruelly psychopathic among us were misleading and misdirecting the credulous misled, and even encouraging some of these into some real mental illness! …But, as the inordinately officious and arrogant usually end up, his very honorable and well-conceived initiative quickly went bad.
Klasskurtxian? This is a word coined in a mash-up of the names Philip Klass and Paul Kurtz—two CSI(COP) creating "heavyweights"—a mashup attempting to put some "name" to the aspects of their... for this observer? A cripplingly Anthropomorphic, arrogant, and altogether cowardly science "philosophy," one ever filled with obnoxious hubris and unearned arrogance. This philosophy would be counter to one more legitimately and constructively sought, eh? Remember the name Rupert Shelldrake...
"Klasskurtxian," it is submitted, evolved to be a graceful co-mingling of Onomatopoeia and a "clear-crystal" self-definition just begging explanation! It is a word meant to clatter concussively—if effortlessly—off the tongue and palate... like a big porcelain urn of live poisonous snakes dropped in the CSI(COP) Commissary to shatter dangerously on the floor! That sound. Hear the hissing! Hear the shattered glass! It's the sound of philosophical betrayal.
Then there was the foreshadowing cast by the early Truzzi schism! The CSICOP movement started to go bad… so well-respected philosopher Marcello Truzzi, co-founder of CSICOP, loudly left in a huff, bailing early on! He would accuse Kurtz and others of "abandoning true skepticism for ideological [culture issue?] warfare." Ouch! Truzzi’s departure marks the moment when a full-blown klasskurtxianism began to crystallize.
Klasskurtxianism, used in a sentence? "The bureaucrat's devotion to klasskurtxianism was complete—he filed his soul in illegible triplicate and then burned the original."
No… Klass and Kurtz were duplicitous UFO skeptibunky bigots needing a more fulsome and descriptive appellation... So! By fusing these figures, I attempt to craft a mythic archetype: the institutional “gatekeeper” turned ideological “saboteur,” cloaked in glad faux-rationalisms but driven by deeper fears—fears of paradigm shifts, fears of cosmic accountability, and fear of losing control over the "official" narrative. That last was the big one.
Another definition? Klasskurtxianism (n.) — A rhetorical and ideological posture marked by performative skepticism, institutional gaslighting, and the strategic suppression of anomalous truths—especially those threatening entrenched power structures. Named for Philip Klass and the Paul Kurtz archetypes, it embodies the paradox of denying the extraordinary while secretly fearing, so then ignoring, its implications.
Used again in a sentence? "The committee's klasskurtxianism was palpable—they dismissed the radar data, ridiculed the pilots, and then quietly encouraged funding for classified aerospace programs."
What are the more obvious traits of Klasskurtxianism?
Well, to start, it weaponizes skepticism! Not into some hard-ass but genuine tool of inquiry where there's "truth though heaven falls," but as a mechanism to preserve a comfortable orthodoxy keeping that same heaven from falling, at all, it is offered! There seems to be a palpable if ironic fear of that "heaven falling," is the suspicion... their heaven!
Paul Kurtz, the architect of institutionalized skepticism, was the errant philosopher who codified doubt into an insentient, officious, and hypocritical doctrine. In klasskurtxianism, he’s not just a name but a mythic archetype: the "gatekeeper of reason" who, in his zeal to protect science, may have unwittingly worked but to ossify it?
A last definition to make the point fine? Klasskurtxianism (n.) A mythic ideology rooted in the legacy of Philip Klass and Paul Kurtz, characterized by a reflex institutional skepticism that only masquerades as scientific inquiry while actively suppressing what might be anomalous truths. It weaponizes reason and then distorts it to defend orthodoxy, often at the expense of any genuine exploration or science.
A last sentence? Klasskurtxia is certain where hubris outruns humility and complacency's convenient certitude outweighs one's unblinking honest inquiry.
Closing… Jerry Clark, a serious ufologist of yesteryear, hated this word’s coinage and scorned it openly. …Only, one thought the Kurtz crowd was getting away with too much and needed a snatching up by their rusty and unserviceable stacking swivels. To that end, this writer penned a two-part send-up that took on Kurtz’s CSI(COP) [still in the website address!] point for effin’ point. Find it here!
Enter, the klasskurtxian. Behold and weep!
Oh… he had a noble start. "Critical Thinking" was being cheapened for the masses by the too readily available alternative facts, especially via the internet later on... and too many of the cruelly psychopathic among us were misleading and misdirecting the credulous misled, and even encouraging some of these into some real mental illness! …But, as the inordinately officious and arrogant usually end up, his very honorable and well-conceived initiative quickly went bad.
Think: Scientistic authoritarianism (...not scientific! Science can't be authoritarian by definition!)! That phrase? A foreshadowing synonym for klasskurtxian!
Klasskurtxian? This is a word coined in a mash-up of the names Philip Klass and Paul Kurtz—two CSI(COP) creating "heavyweights"—a mashup attempting to put some "name" to the aspects of their... for this observer? A cripplingly Anthropomorphic, arrogant, and altogether cowardly science "philosophy," one ever filled with obnoxious hubris and unearned arrogance. This philosophy would be counter to one more legitimately and constructively sought, eh? Remember the name Rupert Shelldrake...
"Klasskurtxian," it is submitted, evolved to be a graceful co-mingling of Onomatopoeia and a "clear-crystal" self-definition just begging explanation! It is a word meant to clatter concussively—if effortlessly—off the tongue and palate... like a big porcelain urn of live poisonous snakes dropped in the CSI(COP) Commissary to shatter dangerously on the floor! That sound. Hear the hissing! Hear the shattered glass! It's the sound of philosophical betrayal.
It has a meaning easily determinable just in context, eh? It’s not a complementary appellation... even not understood! It just looks and sounds derogatory! Oh... and it is. ...Of needs and for cause as we point out!
Philip Klass? He was the more fabulous ufological nay-sayer and unethical well-poisoner of the duo. We recall the time he attempted to turn Canada against the late Stanton Friedman when Friedman sought to immigrate there... Klass, in a letter on his letterhead, and scurrilously, painted Stanton Friedman to Canada as an undesirable! Klass was unsuccessful...
Philip Klass? He was the more fabulous ufological nay-sayer and unethical well-poisoner of the duo. We recall the time he attempted to turn Canada against the late Stanton Friedman when Friedman sought to immigrate there... Klass, in a letter on his letterhead, and scurrilously, painted Stanton Friedman to Canada as an undesirable! Klass was unsuccessful...
The effin' GALL! Headshakes are called for. ...But, that's ok... Klass wrote Friedman a big fat check later in another matter where Friedman caught him short on a disingenuous point... and nailed him for it.
Ostensibly, Philip Klass was a prominent aerospace journalist and a leading UFO "skeptic." He was also very well known for too aggressively, if weakly, debunking ALL UFO claims! To this end?
He was often accused of cherry-picking evidence and using ad hominem tactics to fallaciously discredit even expert witnesses and researchers. Kurtz was to have said of him… “Yeah, he’s a nut… but he’s OUR nut.” The reader can Google this institutional back-stepping scourge at their whim! No links, a pox on his memory! Paul Kurtz… less famous, needs the deeper dive as the creator and provenance of this lurid CSICOPian morass.
Paul Kurtz, we discover, was a pivotal figure in the rise of organized skepticism in the United States. He founded CSICOP—the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal—in 1976, and later, perhaps caught intellectually short and hedging pecuniary bets vis-à-vis his lucrative "klasskurtxian" publishing house, Prometheus Books, and trying to rebrand (in the opinion of this writer), dodged reputational accountability, renaming it as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) in 2007 for a "new" start.
Paul Kurtz, we discover, was a pivotal figure in the rise of organized skepticism in the United States. He founded CSICOP—the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal—in 1976, and later, perhaps caught intellectually short and hedging pecuniary bets vis-à-vis his lucrative "klasskurtxian" publishing house, Prometheus Books, and trying to rebrand (in the opinion of this writer), dodged reputational accountability, renaming it as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) in 2007 for a "new" start.
His purported "mission"? It was to counter what he saw as a "dangerous surge" in paranormal belief and pseudoscience. He had a BROAD brush for any of that, as it turned out, and would dismiss new ideas perfunctorily on his largely unsupported dictate. That's science?
Who Was Paul Kurtz? Kurtz was a Philosopher and secular humanist: Kurtz championed rational inquiry, ethics without religion, and the scientific method as a foundation for public discourse… so… full marks so far? Where’s he go bad? …Well, to start?
He faux-institutionalized real skepticism! Kurtz helped transform legitimate skepticism from a personal, if factually based stance, into a bureaucratic machine of scientistic (sic) dogma! Indeed and verily! CSICOP became the corrupt "Vatican" of the "paranormal's" official denial! The patriarchy of bigoted officiality.
Then? He disguised that DOGMA as the governor on "rational inquiry," while claiming, disingenuously, to promote open scientific investigation! No! To the contrary, CSICOP often defaulted to debunking, dismissing, and deriding anomalous data before any full engagement or credible investigation was initiated at all!
Who Was Paul Kurtz? Kurtz was a Philosopher and secular humanist: Kurtz championed rational inquiry, ethics without religion, and the scientific method as a foundation for public discourse… so… full marks so far? Where’s he go bad? …Well, to start?
He faux-institutionalized real skepticism! Kurtz helped transform legitimate skepticism from a personal, if factually based stance, into a bureaucratic machine of scientistic (sic) dogma! Indeed and verily! CSICOP became the corrupt "Vatican" of the "paranormal's" official denial! The patriarchy of bigoted officiality.
Then? He disguised that DOGMA as the governor on "rational inquiry," while claiming, disingenuously, to promote open scientific investigation! No! To the contrary, CSICOP often defaulted to debunking, dismissing, and deriding anomalous data before any full engagement or credible investigation was initiated at all!
In fact! He and his ready minions refused to investigate that which he would then authoritatively pronounce upon! That’s science?
He suppressed the genuine anomalous: UFOs, psi phenomena, and other compelling "edge" cases weren’t just questioned—they were ridiculed, marginalized, erased, or canceled from serious discourse and discussion, out of hand! ...Ask Dr. Rupert Shelldrake, he’ll tell you!
He suppressed the genuine anomalous: UFOs, psi phenomena, and other compelling "edge" cases weren’t just questioned—they were ridiculed, marginalized, erased, or canceled from serious discourse and discussion, out of hand! ...Ask Dr. Rupert Shelldrake, he’ll tell you!
Then there was the foreshadowing cast by the early Truzzi schism! The CSICOP movement started to go bad… so well-respected philosopher Marcello Truzzi, co-founder of CSICOP, loudly left in a huff, bailing early on! He would accuse Kurtz and others of "abandoning true skepticism for ideological [culture issue?] warfare." Ouch! Truzzi’s departure marks the moment when a full-blown klasskurtxianism began to crystallize.
Morever? Money was being made... big money. Ask pro-skeptics Shermer, Magaha, Sheaffer, and Oberg et al... all on the Promethean Books payroll! We begin to suspect that "comfortin' naysayin'" makes great bank for those in catbird seats!
Reaching? Kurtz’s inclusion in the mashup could be a play on Colonel Kurtz, evoking “Heart of Darkness” motifs, and that motif's descent into moral and ethical chaos for the "system"... Our Kurtz, revealed as an ironic author of that which he opposed... but... that would be a stretch. Our arrogant and officious Kurtz certainly contributed to our further cognitive degradation, in the opinion of this writer… and how ironic was that?
Reaching? Kurtz’s inclusion in the mashup could be a play on Colonel Kurtz, evoking “Heart of Darkness” motifs, and that motif's descent into moral and ethical chaos for the "system"... Our Kurtz, revealed as an ironic author of that which he opposed... but... that would be a stretch. Our arrogant and officious Kurtz certainly contributed to our further cognitive degradation, in the opinion of this writer… and how ironic was that?
Degradation? Perhaps a worrying result of some phonetic twist on "curse" or "crux," thinly suggesting a burden or some central dilemma, one unaddressed and unadmitted? There is our encouragement to intellectual cowardice and species stupidity, ironically provoked by klasskurtxian proclivities and initiatives... proclivities and initiatives creating unnecessary "informational vacuums" or "knowledge voids" ...and them sucking in whatever is there to be sucked in... nature abhorring that vacuum! This, while making no real effort, scientifically, to provide credible information, perhaps helping to fill some of those "vacuums" and "voids"? At least a "good faith" effort, and not just the usual dismissiveness, denial, and unsupported and reflexive derision, the abject marginalization of the "paranormal," practiced otherwise!
...More irony! Kurtz wanted to rescue secular scientific sensibilities but only cast his ostensibly righteous science in the light of an uptight officialdom not investigating that which it was airily pronouncing upon, as we’ve already pointed out! That's not a good look for a perspicacious person or any serious sceptic.
Defined, then? Klasskurtxianism (n.) ...A satirical or speculative ideology that critiques the entanglement of class-based power structures with moral decay, institutional absurdity, and the sad performative rituals of cultural orthodoxy. These are attitudes often expressed by the activities of short-sheeting charlatan catbirds, happy with the “way things are [...were!].”
Defined, then? Klasskurtxianism (n.) ...A satirical or speculative ideology that critiques the entanglement of class-based power structures with moral decay, institutional absurdity, and the sad performative rituals of cultural orthodoxy. These are attitudes often expressed by the activities of short-sheeting charlatan catbirds, happy with the “way things are [...were!].”
Klasskurtxianism, used in a sentence? "The bureaucrat's devotion to klasskurtxianism was complete—he filed his soul in illegible triplicate and then burned the original."
No… Klass and Kurtz were duplicitous UFO skeptibunky bigots needing a more fulsome and descriptive appellation... So! By fusing these figures, I attempt to craft a mythic archetype: the institutional “gatekeeper” turned ideological “saboteur,” cloaked in glad faux-rationalisms but driven by deeper fears—fears of paradigm shifts, fears of cosmic accountability, and fear of losing control over the "official" narrative. That last was the big one.
Another definition? Klasskurtxianism (n.) — A rhetorical and ideological posture marked by performative skepticism, institutional gaslighting, and the strategic suppression of anomalous truths—especially those threatening entrenched power structures. Named for Philip Klass and the Paul Kurtz archetypes, it embodies the paradox of denying the extraordinary while secretly fearing, so then ignoring, its implications.
Used again in a sentence? "The committee's klasskurtxianism was palpable—they dismissed the radar data, ridiculed the pilots, and then quietly encouraged funding for classified aerospace programs."
What are the more obvious traits of Klasskurtxianism?
Well, to start, it weaponizes skepticism! Not into some hard-ass but genuine tool of inquiry where there's "truth though heaven falls," but as a mechanism to preserve a comfortable orthodoxy keeping that same heaven from falling, at all, it is offered! There seems to be a palpable if ironic fear of that "heaven falling," is the suspicion... their heaven!
Michael Shermer is a lapsed Christian fundamentalist, is the understanding, so this new fundamentalism might be a comfortable fit for many of them... still, it's peculiar behavior from avowed atheists. It remains, heavens that CAN fall SHOULD fall. We rebuild from that and always have.
Then? It facilitates "institutional duplicity"! Its public denial is only paired with covert interest or exploitation. Moreover, it is a “Mythic inversion” where the skeptic becomes the zealot, the unreasonable "religious" fundamentalist guarding a "truth" they refuse to name or substantiate! It becomes a Cultural gaslighter! It rewrites history to erase the anomalous, the inconvenient, or the highly strange. To what end one wonders... but the death of wonder.
Kurtz, folded into our term "klasskurtxianism," becomes the "institutional philosopher of denial" as his well-deserved legacy! He became what he abhorred. See, he was the one to provide for the codification of skepticism into a bureaucratic fundamentalist religion!
Kurtz, folded into our term "klasskurtxianism," becomes the "institutional philosopher of denial" as his well-deserved legacy! He became what he abhorred. See, he was the one to provide for the codification of skepticism into a bureaucratic fundamentalist religion!
His legacy is tragically complex: he helped elevate science in public discourse, but he also helped entrench a form of gatekeeping that usually stifled purposeful inquiry into the genuinely anomalous! UFOs (we don't say UAP in these parts!) are a case in point!
Paul Kurtz, the architect of institutionalized skepticism, was the errant philosopher who codified doubt into an insentient, officious, and hypocritical doctrine. In klasskurtxianism, he’s not just a name but a mythic archetype: the "gatekeeper of reason" who, in his zeal to protect science, may have unwittingly worked but to ossify it?
A last definition to make the point fine? Klasskurtxianism (n.) A mythic ideology rooted in the legacy of Philip Klass and Paul Kurtz, characterized by a reflex institutional skepticism that only masquerades as scientific inquiry while actively suppressing what might be anomalous truths. It weaponizes reason and then distorts it to defend orthodoxy, often at the expense of any genuine exploration or science.
A last sentence? Klasskurtxia is certain where hubris outruns humility and complacency's convenient certitude outweighs one's unblinking honest inquiry.
So? ...More James MacDonald, who risked his reputation for empirical truth! Less Edward Condon, who embalmed inquiry in bureaucratic denial in the service of a lack of truth!
Closing… Jerry Clark, a serious ufologist of yesteryear, hated this word’s coinage and scorned it openly. …Only, one thought the Kurtz crowd was getting away with too much and needed a snatching up by their rusty and unserviceable stacking swivels. To that end, this writer penned a two-part send-up that took on Kurtz’s CSI(COP) [still in the website address!] point for effin’ point. Find it here!
That said… intellectual cowardice, like simple cowardice, is a choice. Humanity could choose better, and has on occasion. Lately, though? We prefer the insensible sectarian to the sensible secular. We embody the alternate facts for genuine facts! We embrace the credulous authoritarian over the receipt-holding authoritative! Strikes one, two, and three! One regards what belief in the afterlife has done to persons in this life.
Klasskurtxianism can shoulder some of the blame for this imaginational and intellectual malaise of spirit and courage, perhaps driving persons he was trying to reach back into the arms of their contrived and perfunctory gods. No... one doesn't encourage a person to their banner or sense of things by ridiculing, canceling, and dismissing them out of hand. What's "hammered down" inordinately for (errant?) dogma's sake, only pops up somewhere else... just meaner. That seems plain to this loose-cannon [...if small caliber!] but aspirant staid observer.
Finally, Restore John Ford! Yes! Restore John Ford—a silenced witness, a forgotten scapegoat for klasskurtxian denial and misdemeanor! Restore John Ford—our reminder that truth suppressed festers, but it never dies. Restore John Ford!
