I just discovered this three part interview with David Berlinksi, and it is funny! Well, if you are an Intelligent Design supporter. I recommend the entir thing, but here’s some great quotes, especially his critique of Talk Reason and The Panda’s Thumb.
On the Darwininan Blogs (Talk Reason and Pandas Thumb)
I follow two [Darwinian blogs]: Talk Reason and The Panda’s Thumb, and I must say, I find them fascinating. Talk Reason is upscale and sober, and it gets good people to write for it: Mark Perakh, for example, or Andreas Bottrero. They make an effort to be fair. And yet the overwhelming impression conveyed by Talk Reason is a kind of insecure disgruntlement. It is the impression conveyed by men who suspect that the opinions they reject might just prove persuasive to men less intelligent than themselves, rather like a group of cigarette company executives complaining to one another about the irresponsible allegations that smoking is involved in the onset of various diseases. One of their listings is entitled The Art of ID Stuntmen. An interesting title, don’t you think? A stunt is, after all, something requiring a certain skill, and stunts are designed to fool those who view them. These five words convey an entire system of anxiety.
The Panda’s Thumb, on the other hand, is entirely low-market; the men who contribute to the blog all have some vague technical background – computer sales, sound mixing, low-level programming, print-shops or copy centers; they are semi-literate; their posts convey that characteristic combination of pustules and gonorrhea that one would otherwise associate with high-school toughs, with even the names – Sir Toejam, The Reverend Lenny Flank – suggesting nothing so much as a group of guys spending a great deal of time hanging around their basements running video games, eating pizzas, and jeering at various leggy but inaccessible young women.
Now if Talk Reason conveys an attitude of insecure and even worried superiority, The Panda’s Thumb conveys something quite different, and that is a deep, almost incoherent anger.
When you look at Talk Reason, you see a lot of smart but lazy and shallow people defending what they take to be important issues of principle in a way guaranteed to make their defense a perfect irrelevance. When you look at the Panda’s Thumb, you see an entire overlooked class demanding its right to be heard, and when given that right by the blog itself, having nothing whatsoever to say beyond a very touching demand that that right be accommodated.
On why the public believes ID (classic)
The ID movement in its attack on Darwinism has simply articulated what many people instinctively feel. Darwin’s theory is plain nuts. It is not supported by the evidence; it has no organizing principles; it is incoherent on its face; it flies against all common experience, and it is poisonous in its implications.
And another thing. It is easy to understand. Anyone can become an evolutionary biologist in an afternoon. Just read a book. Most of them are half illustrations anyway. It’s not like studying mathematics or physics, lot of head splitting stuff there.
It is thus infinitely droll to see evolutionary biologists restrain themselves from debating the issue on the grounds that the public is apt to get confused. And God Knows, there’s no need to confuse the public so long as they keep those swell funding checks coming.
Is this the guy who interviewed himself? He rather strikes me as the ID's version of Dawkins, smart but rather full of himself. His comment about becoming an evolutionary biologist is really out there. Does he realize how many areas of study are involved?
Irrational Entity,
He simply doesn't care about the realities of evolution, or study, or knowledge. To his mind, because he doesn't find evolution persuasive, it's a junk science. What's absurd is that he only slags off evolution in what Seeker's given us. There's no defense of the ludicrous notion of the Earth being 6000 years old or whatever.
What I especially enjoy is his idea that because the majority believe in creationism, then creationism must then be right. He suggests that these creationists believe in creationism because they've looked at the evidence and made a decision. He offers no insight as to the possibility that creationists were taken to church at a young age and their minds forever polluted to the idea that anything but creationism could have happened. What I mean is, the suggestion that not believing in what we're telling you means a sentence to eternal damnation. That can be incredibly influential in a child's life, if her/his mom or dad or priest or preacher warns that believing what they're telling you in science class means hell for you in the afterlife.
But these sorts of people are bogus. Unlike researchers, who are willing to change their minds given shifting and changing evidence, this man will believe in creationism until the day that he dies. No evidence will change his mind. Nothing will sway his belief, which itself, at its very core, is hardly evidence of the man being a considerate thinker. He long ago decided that evolution was wrong. And that in it of itself is part of the problem.
Sam, I don't know of anyone that is saying if you believe in evolution you are going to hell. I'm sure some Christians do believe in evolution. I may think they are misguided, but that doesn't equate with hell-bound.
According to orthodox Christian theology one thing and one thing only results in hell – gay marriage. Just kidding. It is a rejection of Jesus Christ. All other things evolution, gay marriage, etc. pale in comparrison and are nothing compared to the importance of Jesus and accpeting Him.