I was just saying at dinner that I didn’t think there was anything interesting to say in response to the whole “cracker” kerfuffle. Then I got home, and saw Daniel Davies’s post, which is too good not to link. My hat’s off to him.
No, I’m not going to quote what he said– it’s short, you can go over there and read it yourself.
Seth Finkelstein in the comments is good 😉
Professor Orzel, I think that the main problem I have with your and Daniel’s reactions to the cracker controversy amounts to this:
Political religion (specifically, in America, Christianity) is being used to corrupt our society into mass intolerance and ignorance. This should not be a controversial statement, if one looks at the objective aims of PolRel and the definition of intolerance and ignorance. The reason for this is that so many people hold very, very stupid beliefs in extraordinarily high regard.
PZ Myers was, to my mind, making the very valid point that if we allow anything to be above skepticism, criticism and, if justified, ridicule, then we as a society will be retarded in our progress.
Religion is a relic of humanity’s childhood, much like Santa Claus, and like the jolly red-suited man we should discard organized religion forthwith. And whatever need be done to facilitate that, short of outright violence, is perfectly fine with me.
Dudes, PZ did it for the lulz. You guys are all overthinking this. Come to think of it, I am too. I should die.
From Novak’s Laws of Internet Debate: “Just because you are arguing with twits doesn’t mean you are not also a twit.”
PZ needs to internalize that one.
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.”
Nietzsche put it quite well.
There is a symmetry between fundamental preachers of religion and fundamental preachers of science. You take “God, God, God” and substitute with “facts, facts, facts”. But there are no facts… facts are what we want to think of as facts. When you start learning physics, you think “ah, so now we know what electrons are!”. Then you learn more and understand that electrons are in our heads only, they’re just abstract concepts. Physicists 50 years ago thought they had the world at their feet. Now it’s the biologists, like PZ.
In the thread on Crooked Timber, people criticize the OP for “lying to a child”. Well — when we teach children about electrons flying around the atom following circular orbits, aren’t we lying to them as well? There’s no symmetry here, because our models of atoms (and the concept of atom itself) are useful, even if they are what they are — just stories. We build computers and cure disease using these stories. Stories about God and rainbow are also useful (for emotional reasons), but much less. So as I said, there is no symmetry. But there is also no opposition “Reality vs Myth”. No. There are only different stories, some of them more useful (and not force-fed at gunpoint), some of them less useful (and from time to time force-fed at gunpoint). PZ and his cohort think they are fundamentally better than religious fundies because a) they don’t send death threats and b) because they have “Reality”. a) is correct, b) is a scam.
I have an idea. Let’s all just stay silent, and let the University expel a kid because he wasn’t dogmatically correct. Stay silent and just hope it all goes away.