Bill Nye is arriving in Morris sometime today, and I’m looking forward to his talk — I’m hoping it will be material from his new book, Undeniable, which won’t be available until next month. But look at that subtitle: “Evolution and the Science of Creation”. If he does, he might drive some of the locals to a foaming fury, if they show up for the talk, which they probably won’t. I might have to read the town paper for a week or two to see if there is any reaction, or if it just gets buried.
But it also means I’m going to get tangled up in a wild social whirl on top of my usual teaching obligations today. I might be a little busy for a while.
Surely for marketing “UndeNYEable”.
Prediction: Creationists will claim Nye as support for the notion that creationism is science. “It says so right on the cover!”
They will, of course, ignore everything else the book says.
The knights who say Nye!
This sounds like a most excellent way to be distracted and busy.
John Lydon (from a Q&A at The Guardian), asked about his spiritual beliefs:
Atheism is simply what Lydon described as his position.
A chant just like at a sporting event! That’s super consistent with no moar hero worship.
Say “Hi” to Bill Nye for me. He doesn’t know me and I don’t know him personally, but I really like what he has done to further science education. If it wouldn’t make for some strange photos, I’d ask you to hug him for me.
Nye is pluscool, he needs a show again.
Right, we can’t cheer for people, I forgot. Admiring anyone remotely famous is hero worship zomg! Come on, dude. I’m no fan of the Glorious Leader paradigm, but when you like what someone’s doing it only makes sense to cheer them on.
[please don’t spam the comments with these transparent puff pieces. –pzm]
@octopod 11:
When atheists have created a movement that isn’t rife with shit like this, then maybe they can be trusted to know how to differentiate between harmless fandom and dangerous hero worship.
Until then, and not before, I’m not going to stop calling such things out.
Sorry, that’s not the link I meant to use in 13. Ophelia has a post on the kind of shit I’m talking about, and links the correct post by PZ in it.
Anthony K: On Twitter I’ve got some loon spamming Bill Nye’s account with warnings that I hate him. Here I’m getting told I’m too close to worshipping him. If I promise not to get on my knees and praise his infallibility, can I at least have a little enthusiasm and look forward to hearing his talk?
Loons on twitter holding a position somewhat in opposition to mine does not make the middling position the correct one.
I dunno. What does the science say about things like this? How did we get into this fucking mess in the first place? Whatever happened to create the movement we have now, don’t do that. Is that helpful enough?
Check this out: Great Man Theory. Goddamn Herbert Spencer offers the counterargument.
@anthrosciguy @7 — Sure, but (1) Lydon is amusing; and (2) he is appropriately skeptical of “isms” as well as “leaders” and other abstractions. The way I take it, he is not only anti-religion (as is explicit in his new book), he is not interested in opposing religion on a conceptual level that is basically their turf. I have some sympathy with that approach: Oppose the hateful actions, let the ideology f-f-fade away. Anyway, I thought the lime flavored yoghurt line was excellent.
Channeling Ian Paisley with the title there I see…
So, you posted it on the relevant ‘boycotting Jaclyn Glenn’ thread, rather than this one, I assume?
What a funny thing for an ostensibly educated person to say. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to find the elementary error in basic logic William Wilde is making here.
Dear AntiHeroWorship Forum,
I never thought I’d be writing to you…
Sorry PZ! Saw the comment before you flushed it. Go ahead and flush my response (and this one too) if you prefer.
It wasn’t particularly hilarious. It was a rather clumsy satire of the religious right.
I did wonder where this call to boycott Glenn was located — it isn’t in the two relevant posts where I criticized Glenn’s bad ideas. Maybe you couldn’t find the right place to make your comment because it doesn’t exist?
@ 13 Anthony K
“Until atheists can be trusted to differentiate between harmless thing A and dangerous thing B, I’m not going to stop calling out harmless thing A.”
cf.
“Until atheists can be trusted to differentiate between criticism of Islam and hatred of Muslims, I’m not going to stop calling out criticism of Islam.”
PZ, you might be surprised. Bill Nye spoke at my university here in Small Town University, Parts Unknown, The South. Literally thousands showed up in inclement weather, and the response was tremendously positive. I don’t know if there were any naysayers but they were pretty much drowned out, if they said anything at all.