This loon, Gerry Rzeppa, has made a challenge to Richard Dawkins. All Dawkins has to do is show up on a stage with Rzeppa, listen to him read from his children’s book for about ten minutes, and answer one simple question…and Rzeppa will hand over $64,000 (if he even has it). I don’t think Dawkins should do it, since it’s like taking advantage of the mentally deficient, but then…
I read the book. Yeesh. You’d have to pay me more than that to get me to sit through that Vogon poetry again.
I can understand that some days you have little time to post — I’m still trying to catch up on work after my long weekend in the west myself — but chumming the waters with Vox Day? Gross, man.
I guess one has to keep the commenters fed, though.
Oh, but I do rankle Mark Armitage. He has taken to cc’ing me his email to others, all in this bluff, indignant, “me am too a scientist” pose, and it is hilarious. This is probably the last one I’ll post here, but I do hope he keeps sending me this stuff — it provides a moment of levity.
When the top of your web page is a scattershot series of all-caps links to crazy town.
– Life After Death –
-WHY THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION ENRAGES US!.
WHY ALL EVOLUTIONISTS ARE CRIMINALLY INSANE
FOR GAYS: HOW TO STOP YOUR HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVITY
FOR THE GENTLEMEN: HOW TO TELL IF YOU ARE A STUPID MAN
FOR THE LADIES: COMPUTER-GENERATED SLUT PHOTODIAMINES
ARE WOMEN SUPPOSED TO BE “BAREFOOT AND PREGNANT”?
———————————————————————————————-
WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE K _ _ _ HILLARY CLINTON
STRIP SEARCHES ARE ILLEGAL EVERYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES
In case you don’t want to read the horrible little site, here’s the executive summary to each point.
Really, people send me these links, and then I have to read them. Some days the blood is oozing out of my ears at the strain.
I try to stay away from Dinesh D’Souza’s ravings, but when you’ve got SIWOTI syndrome, the man is like a magnet of wrong. His one saving grace now is that his columns are so bad, I usually can’t get through the first paragraph without having to close the window. This one is no exception. One paragraph is all any normal person can take.
You never can tell with Jonah Goldberg — everything he writes tends to be so stupid you’re left thinking that he must be joking. He’s just finished watching that new propaganda movie, Fitna, which portrays some of the worst atrocities of Islam — beheadings and terrorism and rioting and fatwas, etc. — and what does this bring to his feeble mind? Those awful, evil, odious atheists who put Darwin fish on their cars. After all, chopping heads off people is exactly equivalent to putting a bumper sticker on your Volvo.
I find Darwin fish offensive. First, there’s the smugness. The undeniable message: Those Jesus fish people are less evolved, less sophisticated than we Darwin fishers.
The hypocrisy is even more glaring. Darwin fish are often stuck next to bumper stickers promoting tolerance or admonishing random motorists that “hate is not a family value.” But the whole point of the Darwin fish is intolerance; similar mockery of a cherished symbol would rightly be condemned as bigoted if aimed at blacks or women or, yes, Muslims.
As Christopher Caldwell once observed in the Weekly Standard, Darwin fish flout the agreed-on etiquette of identity politics. “Namely: It’s acceptable to assert identity and abhorrent to attack it. A plaque with ‘Shalom’ written inside a Star of David would hardly attract notice; a plaque with ‘Usury’ written inside the same symbol would be an outrage.”
But the most annoying aspect of the Darwin fish is the false bravado it represents. It’s a courageous pose without consequence. Like so much other Christian-baiting in American popular culture, sporting your Darwin fish is a way to speak truth to power on the cheap.
Uh-oh. If Goldberg had his way, I’d be off to Gitmo if he saw the back end of my car. I don’t just have a Darwin fish … I’ve got a T. rex eating a Christian fish.
But basically, his whole argument is ridiculous. Having a statement that proclaims your acceptance of the scientific evidence over the bizarre revelations of an old, data-free book is not bigotry, and it is especially not comparable to religious fanatics murdering people. It is also ironic for a dogmatic conservative like Goldberg to be whining about the “agreed-on etiquette of identity politics” — I’ve never seen that coming from his side of the political fence. I grew up with “America: Love It or Leave It” bumper stickers yammering at me from the back of cars, and now we’ve got “Anti-War=Pro-Terrorism”, and of course Goldberg’s own book, Liberal Fascism. His “agreed-on etiquette” is nothing but a set of rules he applies only to his political opponents and never to his political allies.
So, I’m confused. It’s April Fool’s day. A fool has written a foolish article. Is it real or is it a joke? I sincerely cannot tell.
If Goldberg really wanted to catch us by surprise, he should have written something intelligent.
Watch out, if you signed up for one of the Expelled showings, you might find your email address shared with more people than you expected.
I think John ought to sell his newfound mailing list — it’s jam-packed with the gullible, so it would be rather valuable to the unscrupulous.
In slightly related news, Wired wrote up the latest incident, and did something irritating: they illustrated it with the stupid picture of Stein in short pants. I’m thinking I should break out my shorts and have my knobby knees in a counter-illustration.
Michael Egnor, that neurosurgeon whose tenuous grip on rationality makes him so popular with the creationists, thinks he has a gotcha moment with some notorious atheist. That rude godless fellow, who is me, said this, which is accurate:
…greater science literacy, which is going to lead to the erosion of religion, and then we’ll get this nice positive feedback mechanism going where as religion slowly fades away we’ll get more and more science to replace it and that will displace more and more religion which will allow more and more science in and we’ll eventually get to the point where religion has taken that appropriate place as a side dish rather than the main course. And if you separate out the ethical message from religion — what have you got left — you got — you got a bunch of fairy tales, right?
Here’s Egnor’s foolish interpretation of that comment — and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of dogmatic Christians interpret it the same way.
In the midst of a furious national debate about intelligent design, Darwinism, and metaphysical bias and indoctrination in science education, one has to wonder why Dr. Myers would state plainly that the agenda of Darwinists is to advance atheism in the classroom. Why would Dr. Myers state unequivocally on film that a fundamental goal of science education is the suppression of religious belief?
The most parsimonious explanation is that he means it.
What nonsense. I did not “state unequivocally on film that a fundamental goal of science education is the suppression of religious belief.” I do not peddle atheism in the classroom, and am actually very careful, since I am a vocal atheist in the blogosphere, to reassure my students that apostasy is not required to get an “A” in my classes, and that they are free to hold whatever religious beliefs they want — the biology classroom is about evidence, not belief, and explanations supported by logic, not revelation.
I do think science erodes faith, but not because I hammer students with doctrinaire atheism; I don’t need to. Here’s a little anecdote I’ve told a few people that illustrates my attitude.
I was once in an argument with a staunch creationist (a not uncommon experience) in which he berated me, among a multitude of godless liberal college professors, for atheist indoctrination in the classroom…just like Michael Egnor. He was upset because, not unreasonably, people with his beliefs fear to send their children to those reputable colleges because they’ll come home changed and in doubt, and questioning the faith that they work so hard to instill. He thought the same thing, that our classes were places where we actively suppress religion.
I told him that I never criticize his religion in the classroom, nor do I push atheism. Instead, it’s like this: what he does with his religion is the equivalent of telling his kids that the sky is green, and worse, assuring them that this is a fundamental tenet of their religion and that the whole structure comes crashing down if they question it. They get in my classroom, and I don’t tell them their religion is wrong — I tell them to open their eyes and look up.*
That’s where science hurts religion. We have ideals of skepticism and empiricism that do conflict with most religions — I know, a bunch of you will tell me that your religion allows for those values, too, and I’ll argue with you a different time — and that’s where the antagonism arises. I don’t claim the fundamental goal of science education is the suppression of religious belief — the fundamental goal of science education is to question everything. It’s merely a side effect and their own damn fault that religion fares poorly when subjected to criticism.
*I wish I could claim that my crushing reply silenced my opponent and he rethought everything he claimed about science, but of course it didn’t — intransigent creationists never think. Instead, he tried to argue, “well, what if the sky is green, and your unspiritual eyes simply can’t see it?” Etc., etc., etc. And so it goes.
I just got word that that pompous pimple, David Berlinski, is going to be at the Maclaurin Institute on the University of Minnesota campus on 17 April. Fortunately for me, I just this morning agreed to do an interview on Second Life on that date, so I have an excuse to avoid the supercilious snot. You might want to quickly find some reason to skip the event — is that your evening to wash your hair? Or take the dog for walkies (it might be worth it to get a dog for just that reason) — because there is no one else affiliated with the Discovery Institute more likely to infuriate you with his self-satisfied dimness.
The laughing fellow on the left is Sanal Edamaruku, president of Rationalist International and atheist. The cranky old man in the robes on the right is Pandit Surinder Sharma, a self-described Tantrik Magician. The scene is in a studio on Indian television, where the magician is trying to kill the atheist with sorcery. Sharma had said he could kill anyone with sympathetic magic inflicted on a doll made of dough, and that he could accomplish this in a mere three minutes … so Edamaruku confidently offered himself as a victim. The old fake went on for hours and failed.
After nearly two hours, the anchor declared the tantrik’s failure. The tantrik, unwilling to admit defeat, tried the excuse that a very strong god whom Sanal might be worshipping obviously protected him. “No, I am an atheist,” said Sanal Edamaruku. Finally, the disgraced tantrik tried to save his face by claiming that there was a never-failing special black magic for ultimate destruction, which could, however, only been done at night. Bad luck again, he did not get away with this, but was challenged to prove his claim this very night in another “breaking news” live program.
Edamaruku obliged and willing went to his “doom” that night.
The encounter took place under the open night sky. The tantrik and his two assistants were kindling a fire and staring into the flames. Sanal was in good humour. Once the ultimate magic was invoked, there wouldn’t be any way back, the tantrik warned. Within two minutes, Sanal would get crazy, and one minute later he would scream in pain and die. Didn’t he want to save his life before it was too late? Sanal laughed, and the countdown begun. The tantriks chanted their “Om lingalingalingalinga, kilikilikili….” followed by ever changing cascades of strange words and sounds. The speed increased hysterically. They threw all kinds of magic ingredients into the flames that produced changing colours, crackling and fizzling sounds and white smoke. While chanting, the tantrik came close to Sanal, moved his hands in front of him and touched him, but was called back by the anchor. After the earlier covert attempts of the tantrik to use force against Sanal, he was warned to keep distance and avoid touching Sanal. But the tantrik “forgot” this rule again and again.
Now the tantrik wrote Sanal’s name on a sheet of paper, tore it into small pieces, dipped them into a pot with boiling butter oil and threw them dramatically into the flames. Nothing happened. Singing and singing, he sprinkled water on Sanal, mopped a bunch of peacock feathers over his head, threw mustard seed into the fire and other outlandish things more. Sanal smiled, nothing happened, and time was running out. Only seven more minutes before midnight, the tantrik decided to use his ultimate weapon: the clod of wheat flour dough. He kneaded it and powdered it with mysterious ingredients, then asked Sanal to touch it. Sanal did so, and the grand magic finale begun. The tantrik pierced blunt nails on the dough, then cut it wildly with a knife and threw them into the fire. That moment, Sanal should have broken down. But he did not. He laughed. Forty more seconds, counted the anchor, twenty, ten, five… it’s over!
This sounds fun! I’ve been getting email lately from creationists telling me I should die, I should be fired, I should suffer horribly, but all they do is whine that they’re going to mumble to their god to have me destroyed. They should take a lesson from their Indian brethren and start using flash powder and chanting nonsense syllables — it would be no more effective, but it would be much more entertaining.
