Posted by jrosenhouse on October 8, 2009 Richard Dawkins stopped by the NCSE the other day. Josh Rosenau writes:
And no, blog drama did not spill over into the real world. It was a great visit, with Dawkins and Genie getting along swimmingly.
Anyone surprised by this? Let’s face it, the blog drama hasn’t really been that dramatic, occasional whining from certain SciBlings notwithstanding.
Splitter! Errr, accommodationist!
And Coyne is currently in Kinich-Ahau land. There’s even less fiber-optic drama there.
Chad Orzel is particularly whiny, isn’t he? He’s a prime example of the people who take disputes about the relationship between science and religion as a personal affront. Andrew Sullivan is another.
Anyways, one way that Rosenau and others attempt to marginalize those who disagree with them is to paint them as bigots who refuse to work with anyone and who think that anyone who believes in unicorns couldn’t possibly be a scientist.
Of course, none of this is true. Dawkins has never denied that some scientists are believers, and he has never refused to work with people who think religion and science are compatible. So when Dawkins displays his normal behavior which doesn’t fit their smear, they declare victory. Obviously Dawkins has repented from the behavior we pretended he was engaging in! Huzzah! Hurray!
Did Dr. Orzel respond to your comment? (Which, I might add, sounded awfully temperate and well-reasoned for an extremist.)
Let’s hope we can all be one big happy family now and get back to the business of confronting evolution denialists as part of a broad united front, our own – to use Johnson’s term – “big tent” against those who would seek to insert irrational, pseudoscientific mendacious intellectual porn into science classrooms around the world.
Am in the midst of reading Dawkins’s book, and, IMHO, it is definitely the best book published here in the USA by Simon and Schuster…. which means that I think it is better than “Angela’s Ashes” (And yes, I realize that that is sacrilege, given my ties to the author of “Angela’s Ashes”.).
Am in the midst of reading Dawkins’s book, and, IMHO, it is definitely the best book published here in the USA by Simon and Schuster…. which means that I think it is better than “Angela’s Ashes” (And yes, I realize that that is sacrilege, given my ties to the author of “Angela’s Ashes”.).
Holy crap! You just can’t stop yourself can you?
PS, when you respond, please make sure to bring up someone you might possibly be familiar with. Bonus points if the person you bring up and reason you do it is unrelated to the point you are trying to make and simply to make yourself sound important….and I got my picture taken with nobel prize winner Paul Nurse.
Lorax,
I am jumping for joy with the realization that, after spending so many years publishing Michael Behe’s mendacious intellectual porn, that Simon and Schuster is finally trying to redeem itself by publishing the best writer in the English language writing on evolution. I only hope that it becomes a bestseller in its own right, with sales figures to rival the bestselling memoirs written by one of Simon and Schuster’s most popular authors (who was my high school English and creative writing teacher).
John
October 8, 2009
October 8, 2009
October 8, 2009
October 8, 2009
October 9, 2009
October 9, 2009
October 9, 2009