Whose head would you like to see on video?

John Horgan actually defended Ben Stein on Bloggingheads. Now I can understand being a little contrarian, but that’s going too far.

More importantly, I’ve been asked to do another bloggingheads session — it could be with John Horgan, and an opportunity to chastise him for that (as well as talk about something more substantive) or it could be with someone else — so I thought I’d throw it out here. Who do you think would be a good person for me to team up with for a diavlog? Maybe there’s someone out there who hasn’t been on bloggingheads you’d like to see.

Let’s all pack up and move to Great Britain!

The views on religion seem much more congenial.

A charity set up by an ardent Christian to fight slavery and the opium trade has identified a new social evil of the 21st century — religion.

A poll by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation uncovered a widespread belief that faith — not just in its extreme form — was intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution.

Pollsters asked 3,500 people what they considered to be the worst blights on modern society, updating a list drawn up by Rowntree, a Quaker, 104 years ago.

The responses may well have dismayed him. The researchers found that the “dominant opinion” was that religion was a “social evil”.

I think I’d fit right in.

The real expulsions

A fair number of creationists must be leaving a certain propaganda movie and getting on to the internet to find targets of their ire, because I’m getting a little surge in hate mail — mostly short, petty whines and accusations. For any who find this site in addition to my email address, I have two suggestions for you:

  1. Look up the actual stories of the “expelled”. It seems their martyrdom has been grossly exaggerated.

  2. Then compare those stories with more serious case of religious persecution against those who favor evolution.

Creationists, much as I’d love to smack down every one of your silly arguments, I can’t possibly do it one by one. Hang around, ask questions in the comments, and take your turn: we’ll eventually get around to dismantling your ludicrous claims.

Pseudonymity ≠ anonymity

Another minor blog skirmish has erupted over a perennial issue in the blogosphere: the wickedness of anonymous commenters/bloggers/whatever. I’m going to sort of take the side of Greg Laden.

I despise anonymous commenters. It’s pretty much a sure sign that anything the person is going to say is worthless noise if they aren’t willing to sign a name to it.

That said, though, I consider a consistent pseudonym to be a name. I’ve gotten to know lots of people on the web via their chosen pseudonym, and that pseudonym acquires its own authority on the merits of the writing behind it. You don’t need to reveal your full, legal name to be known on the web — it’s good enough to have a handle so we can recognize you. Note that of the 17 Molly award winners here, 10 are using pseudonyms, and that’s just fine.

There are some people who use their own names who are effectively anonymous, and I’ve been getting lots of email from them this week (I may post some of them later — most are short and angry). If your name is Tom Smith, and you send me a one-shot email that is littered with expletives, I’ve never heard of you before and you certainly haven’t explained your position well. You are effectively anonymous. I don’t regard your contributions at all highly.

I also have to comment on something from Drugmonkey. Note, first of all, that “Drugmonkey” is a pseudonym for a person who has a nice consistent voice on the web — I have a clear picture of who “Drugmonkey” is from his writing, which may or may not align well with the person, but that doesn’t matter. And usually I enjoy what he writes, but not this bit.

A final comment on the special SuperDuperz occupational hazard of the teaching college professor. Now, I love you all, really I do. And I once aspired to be one of y’all. Heck, I may eventually be one of you. For full disclosure I’ll further admit that I spent a considerable number of my formative years in rather close proximity to one of you. Here’s the thing. Your whole professional life is predicated on you as the Authority. In the classroom, you have all the knowledge and the students have relatively little. They are explicitly seeking you out for your authority. Even within most “teaching departments” you are the sole expert in not just a narrow area but in several subfields, are you not? And…c’mon, ‘fess up. It goes to your head after awhile doesn’t it? And even more pernicious…do you teach at a small college in the middle of nowhere? Plopped down amongst the local rubes? So you are more worldly and informed on many topics than most of your neighbors? Which makes you…an authoritah? On oh-so-many things?

Well, it’s nice that he aspired to be one of us, but he clearly didn’t make the cut, and I can guess why. His assumptions are faulty. In my classroom, I’m an authority only by accident of birth — I’ve got a thirty year head start on my students. However, my whole goal is to get these students to start questioning and challenging me, and finding out new stuff that I didn’t know before. I even like it when the creationists in class start raising objections. If Drugmonkey thinks a college classroom is a place where the best teaching is done by imposing his views on a roomful of students, he’s not going to make it to that exalted position of The Teaching College Professor, because he won’t be teaching.

Local reminder!

I mentioned some of the good stuff in Morris this weekend, and some are imminent: at 3:00, it’s Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood at the Morris Theatre; then at 8:00, it’s the Auditorium of Creationist Blather, as Angus Menuge argues with me about whether neuroscience leaves room for god (answer: no. Hey, that was quick!). You Twin Cities residents can still make the movie if you leave right now — we’re about 3 hours away.

Or you could rent the video and watch it at home, and apparently the debate will be recorded, so you’ll be able to watch it on the interwebs later on.

Four bad arguments against evolution

Bryan Fischer claims that anyone is capable of defeating Darwin in 4 easy steps, all they have to do is remember his four “scientific” arguments. I’ve got an easier strategy for creationists: be really stupid, lie a lot, and ignore anything a scientist tells you. See? Only three steps, and none of them require any thought whatsoever. Besides, it’s really what Fischer has done, too. The only thing new is that he has distilled creationist inanity down to four easily dismissed lies, and they actually are fairly representative of common creationist misconceptions.

So here you go, Bryan Fischer’s easily trounced arguments.

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