Posted by Josh Rosenau on October 7, 2009 We had a special guest at NCSE today. The photo below shows NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch, me, some guy who writes about blind watchmakers, and Steve Newton.
It turns out, my shirt was rather appropriate for the occasion:
And no, blog drama did not spill over into the real world. It was a great visit, with Dawkins and Genie getting along swimmingly.
H8rs beware!
Marshall McLuhan comes to call?
Nice pictures – although I’m not so sure about the
follow up picture where the NCSE’s ideal solution to the science and religion debate is revealed!
Nice welcome mat on the background wall . . . :)
Argh.
Enough of the Kansas bashing already.
We’ve thrown the kooks out on their butts twice now, will do it again, without a single cent coming out of the tax payer or a single line of creationist/ID crap in a single text book.
Dover cost the tax payers 2 million dollars, and Texas makes Kansas looks like Darwin himself. Kansas was a success story. Take that stupid sign down.
When will Kansas get the credit we deserve for voting those bible thumping morons out on their ass?
Dawkins should hold Kansas up as an example of what goes RIGHT in america, when intelligent people wake up and start voting.
Where can I get one of those shirts?!?!??!
Apparently Dawkins is accommodating with the accommodationists, at least.
Good for him, disagreeing while remaining friends.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
lol, what did you expect? First, Dawkins is a gentleman. Second, he was very gracious in introducing Eugenie Scott at Atheist Alliance International, and in thanking her. Her speech at the AAI bash was excellent (as I say in my latest post on my blog. Only one sentence rankled with me even slightly – and that’s unusual in any speech. There’s always at least something to disagree with, and I certainly don’t expect anyone to hear a speech by ME and agree with every word.
Importantly, nobody on this side of the debate feels any animosity towards her. Everyone is glad that the NCSE has had so much success in defending the teaching of good science. We simply believe that it is not beyond all criticism.
On “my” side of the debate, there has been some civil, constructive criticism of NCSE. You guys have actually made some changes to your website in response, so presumably you think the criticism was at least partly justified. I’m not sure that they’re they best changes, but we could talk about that. On your side, you are starting to seem obsessive.
Josh, we are entitled to criticise NCSE policies and to disagree with specific things that it puts on its site or that Eugenie says. It and she are not infallible. I still don’t understand this hypersensitivity that you display.
On “our” side we are confronted by Mooney and Kirshenbaum saying that it is out of bounds to engage even in civil, thoughtful criticism of theistic evolutionists, such as that in Jerry Coyne’s review of the Miller and Giberson books. Of course we feel upset by that, and by Matt Nisbet’s earlier references to us as a “Noise Machine” and “screechy monkeys”, and his call for Dawkins to withdraw from public discourse. But nobody feels angry with Eugenie Scott.
Why don’t you just admit that Nisbet was out of line, as was Mooney in his “shut up” to Coyne, and in the gratuitous attack on PZ Myers in that weak, self-indulgent book he wrote with Kirshenbaum? If you’d get some perspective, and stop trying to defend the indefensible, we’d get along with you. It’s not really difficult.
Whew, Ron, no insult was intended! I like the Kansas doormat *because* it’s so appropriate; did you realize that Josh was here in Kansas for awhile before he moved out west, and that he was instrumental in kicking “the kooks out on their butts?”
- from Hayce
Russell,
I haven’t read Nisbet’s retort but I have read yours and Mooney’s, and I think if anyone has told someone else to “shut up”, then it’s been you and others on your side of the fence.
John
Josh,
Am glad that there were smiles all around.
I’m reading Dawkins’s book now and I think it is definitely the best book published by Simon and Schuster since 1990. Better than any of David McCullough’s books or even Frank McCourt’s (which may seem like sacrilege since I was one of McCourt’s best students in high school).
Appreciatively yours,
John
When I see a post like Blackford’s above, where everything is fine on one side and “obsessive” on the other, it’s disappointing at the very least.
When “we are entitled to criticise NCSE policies and to disagree with specific things that it puts on its site or that Eugenie says,” but people who criticize you right back are hounded by trolls and dismissed as “weak, self-indulgent” that tells me he’s not a reliable source in this discussion.
I see Josh has netted some of The Intersection’s Finest commenters here. Nice catch!
I’m jealous. I’ve always wanted to meet Dawkins. Hell, I’d like to meet a another atheist face to face. I personally only know 1 atheist and 1 agnostic.
Ps. I like reading your blog.
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is formerly a doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas, in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not battling creationists or modeling species ranges, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.
The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.
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