A Reformed Dropout, who was in the audience of a talk Paul Griffiths and I gave on Dawkins' The God Delusion at UQ, writes a nice review. It was a fun night. I am glad that some of the attenders thought so too.
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William Dembski's lead blogflak DaveScot has stepped in it even more badly than usual. Commenting on Richard Dawkins' recent appearance on Bill Maher's show the other night, he writes:
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Where did you get that word audient? I've only heard Robert Fripp use it before.
My pleasure! Thanks for visiting, and for the link.
Jason wrote:
Audient is a perfectly correct English term for a listener but is nowadays considered obsolete and you are right; I think Robert Fripp is the only person on the planet who uses it regularly.
My! John, you like bikes (I don't know if that's what you call them in Australia; I mean motorcycles) and ride one! What kind is it? I'm trying to save money to buy a Kawasaki ZX-10R or a Yamaha YZF-R1. I imagine you are more into the cruiser bikes.
I wish we could have that kind of events in Mexico.
He certaily captured your essence there.
Winning people over to at least consider your position by being nice and funny! What will the EAC come up with next?
"Audient" seemed to me to be the natural singular of "audience". So I [re]invented it.
I ride a Suzuki Bandit 1200GSF, 2002 (navy blue) model.
John Pieret: If I'd known that Dr Wilkins was going to link to me, I may have edited that post! I fear it is quite badly done, even for a brief review written at midnight after the event.
John (the other John...Oh dear, this is confusing) has a position I used to hold, and so it is remarkably easy for me to see his point. Being funny and pleasant certainly helped, but they weren't the only reasons. The only attacks I can make on his agnosticism are: 1) that the probability of God is so small it isn't worth considering and 2) that accepting the answer of 'God' encourages us to stop asking questions.
...the problem with those lines of attack is that John doesn't advocate those positions. To make those points against him is to indulge in a classic Straw Man fallacy. He acknowledged that he was 'practically' a Level Six on Dawkins' scale, but felt the issue was so fuzzy Dawkins is wrong to make the judgement call of atheism. Scrap that attack.
The problem of 'God not being a suitable answer,' is that John doesn't think so either. So I'm left to shrug somewhat pathetically and say, "Well I have a differing opinion. Uhh. How about them budget cuts to biohumanities, huh?" And then John has a fascinating story about motorcycles and I decide I want to get one.
What's a Dawkinist to do? [Is that a word?] So I grinned, shrugged and had another glass of wine. He's on my side against those nasty theists anyway; why push the matter? Not to mention that he did work on medieval theories of science! Is there no limit to this man's spectacularity?
I like making up words.
Fear not. John loves anyone who says he's funny and doesn't worry about the modifiers.
A sensible attitude. Now, of course, there are many reasonable theists who are against the nastier sort of religionists and who would be (given their numbers) even more useful against the nastiness than us agnostics ...
The obliviocity of that statmentation is beyond questionabilitiness.