Dyspepsia and swallowing crap 2 Dec 2007 The Institute for Intellectual Disco Dancing has spun its recent debacle at Minnesota thus: The dyspeptic and ad hominem blogger/biologist Dr. P.Z. Myers was there and brought a Darwinist claque. Note that in passing it is not a fallacy to be ad hominem if the point is relevant to the argument. But let’s focus on dyspepsia. A friend recently noted my own dyspepsia on matters religious (not nearly as strong as PZ’s though). It occurred to me that dyspepsia is a really great condition: it stops you swallowing shit uncritically. Now intellectual coprophagia may be necessary to ensure that one’s children swallow the same shit you do, but really, if you want to have a healthy intellectual diet, don’t eat shit at all. Eat nourishing stuff like facts and logic. Humor
Creationism and Intelligent Design Wilkins on screen 10 Nov 2009 Proving that I have a great face for radio, you can see the second (but not for some reason, the first) of two video interviews (vlogs) that I did for NYC Atheists recently. There’s a really good shot of my right shoulder giving a talk about one third of the… Read More
Humor Penises, criminals and me 2 Aug 20112 Aug 2011 It’s all there at Darwin Eats Cake Update and elaboration: I asked Jon Wilkins’ (no recent relation) comic creation Guillame the Adaptationist Goat to explain why we make weird faces when orgasming. Lest my readers think I have done an empirical study on this, alas no. I took it from… Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity Ten best species for the last year 23 May 2009 It’s fun to read, but what it means I am not sure. A bunch of systematists have devised the Top 10 New Species list for 2008. It’s basically a way to promote the need for more conservation and systematics at the species level, and that can’t be a bad thing:… Read More
I am sure that you realize that the claquery was paid for in beer. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been interested. We were all feeling a bit dyspepsic going in.
I don’t drink beer, but would have gone just for the event. Same reason I saw the Rolling Stones: ya gotta do it once, just to see what the fuss is all about or so you can say you did it.
There has to be a better reason that that to see the Rolling Stones. Maybe if they were performing Their Satanic Majesties Request…
Sure there’s a better reason to see the Stones … there’s always the chance that the guy up there older than me is gonna do one too many gyrations and break a hip.
As much as I like to read PZ Myers’s blog (along with yours!), sometimes it does seem to me like he is an ad hominem, especially on the topic of religion. Like some people on talk.origins that I have complained about, Dr. Myers seems to take great glee in pointing all the bad things that have come about because of religion and loudly proclaim “All religion is bad!!!”. They never acknowledge organizations like Habitat for Humanity (http://www.habitat.org/), Christian Peacemaker Teams (http://www.cpt.org) or Ten Thousand Villages (http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/) and many, many other organizations that grew out of peoples’ faith and how Christians should be helping others. When I mention these good organizations, the most common response is that of crickets chirping, but occasionally somebody says “You know, they don’t have to be a faith-based organization to do good things.” While that is correct, it usually shows that the respondent has missed the point I was trying to make. From my personal point of view, this attitude among atheists is the exact counterpart to the creationists’ ignoring of scientific evidence for evolution or the big bang. Both attitudes are, IMNSHO, willful ignorance, and I find both to be equally frustrating.