{"id":3954,"date":"2016-08-28T00:31:16","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T05:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3954"},"modified":"2016-08-28T07:32:36","modified_gmt":"2016-08-28T12:32:36","slug":"the-blanking-atheist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2016\/08\/28\/the-blanking-atheist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blanking Atheist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many years ago, PZ Myers asked his followers, &#8220;What would you call me?&#8221; in a blog post oddly reminiscent of Mark 8:29.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">What would you call me?: I\u2019ve got this book off at my publisher, and we\u2019re still arguing over the title. Everyth&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/LtfQbzD\">http:\/\/t.co\/LtfQbzD<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; PZ Myers \ud83d\udd77 (@pzmyers) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pzmyers\/status\/111148865486467072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 6, 2011<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Myers essentially asked his fans to fill in the blank in the phrase &#8220;The _______ Atheist&#8221; in a manner\u00a0that reflects his character and writing style. A commenter known as &#8216;madbull&#8217;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/pharyngula\/2011\/09\/06\/what-would-you-call-me\/comment-page-1\/#comment-40044\">was the first<\/a> to suggest &#8220;happy&#8221; which would eventually become the correct answer\u00a0when\u00a0PZ&#8217;s\u00a0book was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B00BH0VSFS\/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1\">published<\/a>\u00a0around\u00a0two years later.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d have suggested \u201cThe Incivil Atheist,\u201d had I been allowed to comment at the time, for retrospectively <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=%22fuck+civility%22+site:freethoughtblogs.com\/pharyngula\" target=\"_blank\">obvious reasons<\/a>. Three years after <em>The Happy Atheist<\/em>\u00a0hit the bookshelves, those of us with reasonably functional\u00a0memories were surprised to find PZ railing against \u201cThe _______ Atheist\u201d as a personal brand:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Why is it that everyone who calls themselves The &lt;blank&gt; Atheist is a horrible alt-right goon?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; PZ Myers \ud83d\udd77 (@pzmyers) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pzmyers\/status\/769218421149970432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 26, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Everyone, PZ? The <em>Friendly<\/em> Atheist responds:<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/_gdow\/status\/769320066978578438<\/p>\n<p>And thus was the circle completed.<\/p>\n<p>(For those playing along at home, the relevant logical fallacy on display <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pzmyers\/status\/769218421149970432\">here<\/a> is known as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hasty_generalization\">hasty generalization<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many years ago, PZ Myers asked his followers, &#8220;What would you call me?&#8221; in a blog post oddly reminiscent of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":1028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atheism","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3956,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions\/3956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}