Vermont speaker decision comes from the top

If you’ve been trying to complain to UVM about their decision to bring in Ben Stein as a commencement speaker, some of your arguments may have fallen on deaf ears. Richard Dawkins reports:

Someone with a real axe to grind had to have been on the committee
that picked this old fraud”. Layla Nasreddin, posting on
RichardDawkins.net, has found the probable answer to the identity of
that ‘someone’. Ben Stein is an old pal of the President of the
University of Vermont, Daniel Fogel. One is bound to wonder, therefore,
whether the letters that many of us have been writing to Fogel will cut
any ice. If you have written to Fogel, therefore, it would be a good
idea to Forward your letter now to the entire Board of Trustees of the
University of Vermont, and the two administrators in charge of the
Trustees. Here’s a handy list of three addresses:

trustees@uvm.edu, Corinne.Thompson@uvm.edu, estjohn@uvm.edu

I think it is highly unlikely that you’ll get UVM to rescind an invitation, but you can make them squirm a little bit so that they’ll think twice before inviting old cronies who happen to be ignorant jerks to this kind of thing.

Durston’s devious distortions

A few people (actually, a lot of people) have written to me asking me to address Kirk Durston’s probability argument that supposedly makes evolution impossible. I’d love to. I actually prepared extensively to deal with it, since it’s the argument he almost always trots out to debate for intelligent design, but — and this is a key point — Durston didn’t discuss this stuff at all! He brought out a few of the slides very late in the debate when there was no time for me to refute them, but otherwise, he was relying entirely on vague arguments about a first cause, accusations of corruption against atheists, and very silly biblical nonsense about Jesus. So this really isn’t about revisiting the debate at all — this is the stuff Durston sensibly avoided bringing up in a confrontation with somebody who’d be able to see through his smokescreen.

If you want to see Durston’s argument, it’s on YouTube. I notice the clowns on Uncommon Descent are crowing that this is a triumphant victory, but note again — Durston did not give this argument at our debate. In a chance to confront a biologist with his claims, Durston tucked his tail between his legs and ran away.

[Read more…]

Superbowl!

Aren’t you excited? The Superbowl is tomorrow!

OK, I know, most of you probably don’t care. I know I don’t; tomorrow is a lab prep day for me, and I’ll be setting up fly stocks all afternoon. I don’t even know who is playing, and I don’t really care. Some of you might, and that’s all right — my father was a big football fan, although he couldn’t abide the Superbowl since, for all the hype, they were usually poor games — so if you choose to relax with friends and beer and watch the show, it is fine by me.

Here’s something I do find interesting, though. One of the petty annoyances of American sports is their ridiculous religiosity. There are always these showboating athletes who piously announce that their greatest triumphs are due to divine intervention (strangely, when they fumble, they don’t afterwards shake their fists at the heavens and curse their gods). It’s absurd that they believe their omnipotent deity is at all concerned about whether one team wins or another loses, but it’s common background noise at these events.

For the first time, though, I’m encountering media articles that are critical of these god-wallopers.

Does God care who wins? There are few things regarding religion that approach consensus, but it’s fair to say that most of us concur with FoxSports.com columnist Mark Kriegel, who recently wrote, “I refuse to believe that God –anyone’s God — has a rooting interest in the outcome of something as secular and perverse as a (football) game.”

And here’s an editorial where the writer just wishes they’d knock off the public god talk.

Forget the arrogance of that assumption for a moment — God is with only me. There’s something else. I assume some Pittsburgh Steelers are God-fearing men. They can’t all be heathens. So whom does God root for in the Super Bowl, the Cardinals or the Steelers?

And with wars going on all over the world and starvation and an economic collapse, with so much to attend to, does God have leisure to root at all?

Do we believe in a shallow, superficial God? God the Sports Fan?

None of these critics are saying this because they’re atheists who disbelieve this nonsense, don’t get me wrong; they all seem to be saying that these superficial attributions all trivialize faith. But they are at least doing us the favor of pointing out that these are secular games, and they’re a bit embarrassed at the silly piety. It’s a step forward, at least. Next step, point and laugh.

University of Vermont students, faculty, and alumni:

We have a Vermont alumnus among the ScienceBorg: Kevin Beck at Dr Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge. He’d like to coordinate a letter-writing campaign to protest UVM’s poor choice of a commencement speaker, so maybe you should go over there and leave a comment and email address.

I’m still shaking my head over this. The man’s a notorious creationist and apologist for criminal Republican administrations. Why would anyone want to honor this guy? Is it for his work as a shill for eyedrops?

University of Vermont makes an embarrassing decision

Guess who UVM is bringing in to deliver their commencement address?

Ben Stein.

I am very sorry, seniors at that otherwise fine university. You’re going to have a hack wingnut with a history of incompetence at economics, politics, and science standing up and giving you advice. I don’t know what the administrators at your school were thinking; this is a man with no qualifications other than a droning monotone and a stint on a game show. It’s an expression of profound disrespect to the students.

And I’m really sorry for the biology department at UVM — it’s a real slap in the face for the university to drag in this disgrace who has been a figurehead for a movement that is trying to replace science with superstition; a demagogue who accuses modern biology of being a destructive force responsible for the Holocaust.

I am really baffled by this decision. It’s not just that they must have been desperate for a speaker, but that someone with a real axe to grind had to have been on the committee that picked this old fraud.