Wow, but this is awful. Don’t watch it unless you’re feeling masochistic.
It’s a snotty, arrogant punk kid filmed in annoying style claiming that he has disproven atheism and that all science is based on theology. I think he might be something like a freshman philosophy major who has just discovered the problem of induction.
Heh…I knew it wouldn’t be at all difficult to get a feminist to back me up on my wild and crazy claim that feminists didn’t mind getting rude. There’s a nice photo of a long-skirted lady in a big hat teaching a British bobby the delicate ways of politesse, too. Maybe the critics can wait until we start roughing up the police before accusing us atheists of bad manners now.
Larry Moran raised an interesting comparison over at Laden’s place. In response to this constant whining that loud-and-proud atheism ‘hurts the cause’, he brought up a historical parallel:
Here’s just one example. Do you realize that women used to march in the streets with placards demanding that they be allowed to vote? At the time the suffragettes were criticized for hurting the cause. Their radical stance was driving off the men who might have been sympathetic to women’s right to vote if only those women had stayed in their proper place.
This prompted the usual cry of the accommodationists: but feminists weren’t as rude as those atheists.
Were the women saying that men were stupid? Were they portraying them as rubes and simpletons? Were they falling into the trap of making themselves resemble the negative stereotypes of women at the time? IIRC, the answers are No, No, and No. Substitute “atheists” for “women” and “theists” for “men,” and the answers are emphatically Yes, Yes, and Yes. It is one thing to be assertive. It is another thing to be gratuitously rude.
To my surprise, I opened this week’s edition of the university newspaper, and there was an article about me (it’s near the end, on page 18). It’s complimentary, if you think words like “scathing” and “godless” are high compliments, as I do, and it’s also good to see what some of the students think. However! Yes, I say, However!
Those who know the mild-mannered Myers must surely
wonder where the fire comes
from in his blog. He is perhaps
best summarized as a writer
who demands an empiricist
understanding of truth, disdains
misrepresentation of his views,
and insists on a fair shake for
atheists. There is also an element of thrill to his writing,
the thrill of really nailing some
idiot.
Aaaaigh. “Mild-mannered?” I also did a phone interview yesterday with Jason Rennie for his podcast (it’ll air in about a month), and he said afterwards that I sound much different one-on-one than I do on the web. I have got to do something about this horrible image problem — it’s the Wizard of Oz effect. On the web, I’m this giant disembodied head with a stentorian voice, with flames erupting everywhere … and then these people keep insisting on pulling back the curtain and exposing the ordinary, dithering old man with soft-voiced professorial airs.
<sigh>
We are who we are, I guess. It’s just that I wanna be a pirate when I grow up, and my career track seems to be leading me towards the kindly ol’ granpa job, instead.
Darksyde has just announced a few details about the science panels that will be held at the YearlyKos Convention. One relevant piece of information is that I’m the guy in charge of the science caucus, and I have to organize something. If Darksyde had ever seen my office, organization is not a word that would have come to mind…
Animals and education await you at these fine carnivals:
It’s time for the Tangled Bank next week, at About Archaeology — send your tired, your poor…wait, no, send those links to science articles to me or host@tangledbank.net by Tuesday!
Has anyone heard from Dinesh D’Souza lately? He ought to be offering a humble apology now that the atheists he thought were invisible are turning up on the faculty and in the student body.
Oh, wait … he admits that there were “undoubtedly atheists among the mourners”, but considers his point that atheists have nothing to offer “unrefuted”. So I guess the unbelievers are there, they’re just heartless robots. Thanks, Dinesh! You’re a peach!
I met the fellow who was doing this animated short at the Bell Museum a while back, and now he’s let me know the work was done … so here it is for everyone to enjoy.
Awww, Kent Hovind’s appeal has been denied. I feel a bit sorry for his wife, the poor dupe, but Kent will just have more time to convert “lost souls” in jail, so he can’t complain. Well, except for the fact that Satan is in bunk #22. That must be awkward.
(via The Austringer)
By the way, did you know that creationists hate cephalopods because they can’t stuff them in a sack and throw them in the water to drown? Also because they’re cute and lovable and beautiful.
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
