Hemant Mehta – the “friendly” atheist – has a post about a creationist complaining about not getting equal time with Cosmos. Mehta is scornful.
Of course, Faulkner has this crazy idea that Creationism and evolution are deserving of equal time even though only evolution is backed up by the evidence… and considering how little time is allocated to legitimate science programming these days, we should be seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson making the argument for equal time, not a Creationist.
Tell you what: I’m sure Cosmos will give you equal time on the show as soon as pastors start giving equal time to atheists in church. That makes just as much sense as whatever Faulkner said.
Or as soon as atheist bloggers start giving equal time to pseudo-secularists who campaign against abortion rights? While refusing to give equal time to atheists who defend abortion rights?
With friends like these…
“Friendly” means something different to him than to me. To him it seems to be “Selling out his purported values so that terrible people will like him more, with the assumption that his purported allies have no one else to turn to anyway so why not take them for granted and treat them poorly?”
Now, now; I’m sure it won’t be long before there’s some prominent anti-choice religious group making noise and then Hemant will be shouting them down like none of this ever happened. Because, you know, that sort of inconsistency amongst prominent atheists is totes appealing to those fence-sitters out there…
But there’s a secular argument for creationism!
Secular argument for creationism: big bang = unicorn farts. Makes as much sense an anything else.
But there’s a secular argument for creationism!
Yep. Ask the Raelians.
Actually, quite a few of the standard ID/Creationist talking points *are* secular arguments, if not exactly *for* creationism, then against evolution. All that crap about “irreducible complexity” and the “problems with isotope dating” and “lack of transitional fossils” — as long as you stay vague about your proposed alternative, it’s all perfectly secular, even scientific. Just wrong.
[meta]
Actually, I was not just elliptically endorsing Ophelia’s point about hypocrisy, but thinking about this particular blog entry.
John Morales
[OT] If you wish to continue previous discussion that was left abruptly on the Bill gates thread please post a link where we could move it