Posted by Ed Brayton on April 3, 2007 What can you do but laugh when you read things like this:
Barrett Brown and Jon P. Alston, who appear only recently to have entered puberty judging by their obsession with sex…
This from the guy who edited in fart noises over the top of his Alvin and the Chipmunks impersonation of Judge Jones. In related news, the pot and the kettle were recently found dead, face down in a puddle of molten irony.
Unfortunately, the obviously biased, anti-religion tone of Brown and Alston’s book does leave them open to such criticism. Although considering Dembski as a particular ‘critical’ source, I must agree with you about the cookware.
As a very good comic once told me, you can make a joke about anything you want to, but you had better make sure you are funny because otherwise you are just a dick. And that goes for written comedy as much as stand-up.
Mark Twain knew that – Brown and Alston, maybe not so much.
Don’t forget, Ed — fart noises are an instrument of grace in Dembski’s hands. Here’s how he responded to criticism of the animation by Christians on his own blog:
Let me suggest you all read your Old Testament — Elijah taunting the prophets of Baal (and then, oh my, killling them); Micaiah the prophet telling Ahab the king to look forward to his coming death; and Jehu’s respectful treatment of Queen Jezebel (throwing her out a window and letting the dogs lap up her blood). And then in the New Testament we find Paul wishing that certain Judaizers didn’t just circumcise themselves but would go the whole way and castrate themselves. I see the JJSchLaw [Judge Jones School of Law] as an instrument of grace to bring Dawkins and others to their senses (if such a thing were possible). What have you done lately, dopderbeck, to jar Dawkins out of his dogmatic rampage?
Hey, as Brown and Alston themselves said:
Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who will always take advantage of any well-intended concession, and the leaders of the so-called “Intelligent Design” movement, as we shall see, are so incredibly dishonest that they could cause a veteran heroin addict to blush — not out of any moral objection on the part of the addict, but rather out of embarrassment that anyone could be so darned bad at lying.
Personally, I thought they were being a tad too nice.
Barrett Brown and Jon P. Alston, have just published Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, & The Easter Bunny (Cambridge House Press, 2007).
If Dembski doesn’t like it, it must be good. As he wrote to his sycophants earlier, and repeats in a post about this book “…he’s a moron”. And he is.
Actually, Brown and Alston’s book may well be everything Dembski says it is. That is not the subject of this post.
I saw this on Mr. Dembski’s blog:
Uncommon Descent holds that…
[...] At the same time, intelligent design (ID) offers a promising scientific alternative to materialistic theories of biological and cosmological evolution — an alternative that is finding increasing theoretical and empirical support. Hence, ID needs to be vigorously developed as a scientific, intellectual, and cultural project.
I can see the scientific and intellectual part, but I don’t get the part where it says it needs to be vigorously developed as a “cultural” project. Anyhow, the theoretical and empirical support part is where the bicycles are irreducibly complex and anywhere you find the word “dragon” in the Bible you can go ahead and substitute that with “dinosaur”, so yeah, now I get where they’re coming from when they say they need very desperately to push the cultural aspects thingies of intelligent design (ID).
Well, I think it’s very simple. When Dembski uses juvenile ridicule, then he is doing so because there is Biblical support for his actions. When an atheist/agnostic/freethinker does it, then they are just being obnoxious, because such a person does not believe in the Bible and hence cannot use it as support.
Isn’t it simple when you think about it the right way?
I’ve got the Dodos book and it’s a scream!
Yes, they not only take Dembski to task but they tear him a new asshole, which makes three: he has an asshole, he has a new asshole and he is an asshole.
Howdy-
As the co-author of the very fantastic and reasonably-priced book in question, I can assure you all that Flock of Dodos actually contains a disappointingly meager amount of sexual content, and that in fact sex is only mentioned twice – once with regards to the sexual practices of bonobo chimpanzees, which is brought up in the course of a larger point regarding the concept of the Logos, and then again when it’s mentioned in passing that Victorian England was a “sexless time and place.” So I’m actually pretty astonished to see that Dembski has criticized me for being obsessed with sex based on the fact that sex is mentioned twice in my 40,000-word book, although I’m considerably less astonished to see that Dembski himself deploys a jibe regarding my sexual development in the course of his two-paragraph post, apparently without seeing any irony in this.
Also, I dig your blog. Keep it real, gentlemen.
I bet Dembski underlines the dirty words in his dictionary too.
Barret Brown,
I see you bought into the myth of the Victorian Period as being sexless. A thorough study of the period, its language and symbology should sufice to correct that errror.
The Victorians weren’t sexless, they were avoiding sex. A different thing altogether. Avoiding sex and any mention of sex shows an obsession with the subject one could call pathological. It’s like the old quatrain…
Yesterday upon the stairs
I saw a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh i wish, I wish he’d go away
As much as I like the humorous posts on UD, it is usually the comments that give me the biggest laughs. tribune7′s assertion that Ann Coulter is crude only when she’s quoting someone she criticizes was a good one. And fart noises are crude only when done by atheists. And when comments are deleted on UD, it’s keeping things on-topic – while deletion of UD folks elsewhere is censorship. Oh, it just never stops, does it?
I just finished “Dodos,” and laughed from cover to cover.
It’s rife with things I really, really wish I had the chutzpah to say, face to face, to some of the creationist yodelers I encounter. Of course, I never could, but it was wonderful to vicariously experience the thrill of saying such things as I read the book ;^)
And speaking as a relatively prudish upper-middle-aged woman, I loved the business about the bonobos LOL! Guess that means *I’m* barely post-pubescent as well, at least between my ears.
Lynn
Yo Mr. Brown – Thanks for the post! I WILL read your book.
the very fantastic and reasonably-priced book in question
The price in the US may be reasonable. at amazon.de it costs 88.69 €. I hope that the authors do profit from it
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