For any locals who are curious about that Mike Adams character who gave a talk on campus yesterday, Bartholomew’s notes on religion has a good summary of his career as a professional victim. There’s also a more complete account of the terrible oppression Adams faced after his response to the 9/11 emails, a story he told in part but at some length yesterday. Funny how he didn’t mention that part of the story involving an undergraduate student he’d marry 18 months later…
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Ah, the wonderful world of Mike Adams, where men are men and women are property…
Hey, I brought it up in your comments for a reason.
Ah – a professor of criminology – not a proper scientist then!
Speaking of Adamses, I see Scott “Dilbert” Adams is back in the news.
I wonder if he’ll think to blame his latest affliction for his evo-bashing, next…
A little off topic, but in line with religious mistreatment of fellow humans, as opposed to a athiest, I was recently reading Frederick Douglass, (1818-1895),……
“startling as the statement may be–was the fact that the latter gentleman made no profession of religion. I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south–as I have observed it and proved it–is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes; the justifier of the most appalling barbarity; a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds; and a secure shelter, under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal abominations fester and flourish. Were I again to be reduced to the condition of a slave, next to that calamity, I should regard the fact of being the slave of a religious slaveholder, the greatest that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have found them, almost invariably, the vilest, meanest and basest of their class. Exceptions there may be, but this is true of religious slaveholders, as a class. It is not for me to explain the fact. Others may do that; I simply state it as a fact, and leave the theological, and psychological inquiry, which it raises, to be decided by others more competent than myself. Religious slaveholders, like religious persecutors, are ever extreme in their malice and violence
In your previous post about Mike Adams, George said that they’d spent 10 minutes looking him up on the web and now felt kind of dirty. I’ve just done the same thing and feel much the same way. However, while I enjoy a good mock as much as anybody else, would it actually be useful to attack his credentials in, say, an open debate?
As a comparison, we hate Adams and fundies hate Dawkins. Now, Dawkins is a scientist talking about God and we defend his qualifications on the grounds that God doesn’t exist, so there’s nothing to be qualified in. Adams is a criminologist talking about Evolution and my guess would be that fundies would put forward a similar (and, I think, consistent) argument – they’d say that Evolution doesn’t exist so there’s no need to be qualified in it to attack it. I think Adams is a knob, mind, I just worry that sneering at his credentials makes us look a little like the people we’re supposed to laugh at in Chomsky’s interview here (relevant extract below):
Second, I’m writing from the UK and don’t quite understand some of the terminology used. In one of his essays (Townhall.com, 28th August ‘The Queer Professor’, but I really wouldn’t bother reading it) Adams uses his staircase humour to its usual devastating effect to tell his correspondent, ‘I am sorry to report that I do have tenure’. In a later one (Townhall.com, Oct 23rd ‘My Apology to UNC-Wilmington’) he talks about UNC-Wilmington’s, ‘decision to deny my promotion to full professor’.
I thought that Tenure = Full professor. Is that just ignorance on my part?
The basic problem in dealing with people like Adams is that as scientists we are used to dealing with a proven hypothesis – it takes half a library from Darwin to Dawkins to explain the theory of evolution – creationists merely point to the Bible and tell us its all in there. We have to prove everything – they merely have faith – it is this that makes creationism appeal to the uneducated – they don’t have to understand – merely believe
postblogger – institutions vary as to whether you can be tenured at the lower ranks. Dr. Prof. Adams Ph.D was denied promotion to full because the committee found him to be “deficient in all areas” (teaching, publishing, research). Yes, I wonder how he got tenure at all if that’s true. The estimable World o’ Crap has an article on it.
OK, that makes sense – cheers, Buffalo Gal!
Thanks for the link. I didn’t know about Adams’s current “deficient in all areas” situation. He goes on about it at Townhall:
Maybe Adams has a point (ugh!), although it’s worth noting that a) his awards predate his rise to pundithood b) he doesn’t tell us anything about his academic publications and c) he doesn’t actually give us the text of the “written explanation” so that we can judge for ourselves; instead he prefers to rant about his employer being a “Communist dictatorship”.
By the way, I’ve a bit more amusing humbug from Adams here.
BTW, ideally I’d call criminology a psychotechnology or sociotechnology, since it would ideally make use of psychology (etc.) to change and manipulate, rather than to understand.