Comments on: and you have a nice day too

by: flip

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:50:15 +0000

Hey, didn’t I write “emend”ing? As in, to correct a text? Sheesh! This online stuff is red in tooth & claw.

•

Ed: No, the editor is red in tooth and claw. As well as a great big bonehead. I’m repairing my “edit” immediately. Yours contritely, ever admiringly, a huge fan of your TOFFEE, &c.

by: flip

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:00:10 +0000

As long as we’re flogging lousy baseball players, don’t forget J-P. Sartre’s admonition that not to choose is also a choice.

My blessing’s on the editor for emending the text.

by: brew ho

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:12:35 +0000

Okay, maybe I’ll throw out the word fundamentalist. It’s loaded, and I, alas, am not. Loaded, I mean. In whatever sense.

Dawkins knows and is right about what he knows. That’s solitary confinement, really. He makes me want to write a screenplay about a dyed-in-the-wool rationalist who has a sudden spiritual epiphany and becomes one of the greatest shortstops in Phillies history.

by: drian biamond

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:54:44 +0000

Ironically, Dawkins’ fundamentalism (to the extent that fundamentalist is the right word) is reflected in this very quotation. It is his insistence that he arrives at his own beliefs from an ideologically-neutral position of objectivity, informed only by the clarity of empirical evidence. And that others do not.

Even more ironically, it is precisely this perspective that makes him useless in the infield and a useless situational pinch hitter.

•

Editor: Briamond, you win the commenting prize for today. I just don’t know what the prize is. An autographed-by-Dawkins baseball?

by: brew ho

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:30:49 +0000

Does science need to be defended from "pseudo-religious mystification"? I suppose some feel (sometimes passionately) that it does. In fact, I'd say that it's long been established that materialism and meaning need not have a single word with each other. The co-existence of apparently mutually exclusive constructs is not only possible, but highly desirable. Both/and is a bit tough for fundamentalists and ideologues of all persuasions, but is quite possibly a greater truth than either/or (as unsustainable as this messy situation may be for the puny human analytic mind). Fundamentalists of all persuasions are incapable of uttering the sentence, "I don't know." In allowing ourselves to be seduced by gurus of any stripe we decide to kiss our mysterious asses goodbye. Clearly, Dawkins is as much of a fundy as Pat Robertson. I find his blindness to this simple fact to be amusing. You know, like listening to a 14-year-old who has just discovered the profundities of Ayn Rand. • Editor: Ah, but Mr. Dawkins has pre-prepared his confutatio! "No, please, do not mistake passion, which can change its mind, for fundamentalism, which never will. Passion for passion, an evangelical Christian and I may be evenly matched. But we are not equally fundamentalist. The true scientist, however passionately he may 'believe,' in evolution for example, knows exactly what would change his mind: evidence! The fundamentalist knows that nothing will." [from "How dare you call me a fundamentalist," The Times Online]

by: unnarrator

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:49:22 +0000

How do you know he’s a terrible baseball player? Maybe he’s just indifferent.

Your vituperative Wall-to-Wall exchanges with our rhetorical colleague continue to make Facebook visits worthwhile, by the way. I think this last one was my favorite:

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to write louder. It’s hard to hear you through the deafening irrelevance of your chosen discipline.”

by: drian biamond

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:20:00 +0000

If Richard Dawkins is so smart, why is he such a terrible baseball player? The guy couldn’t turn a routine 4-6-9 double-play to save his life. Meanwhile, my ex-roommate who failed biology hit for the cycle last night.

Count me amongst the not-impressed crowd.

by: miss bovary

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:37:15 +0000

Rah Rah Rah!

by: unnarrator

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:46:14 +0000

To my embarrassement, I’ve had a longtime crush on Professor Dawkins; he’s even more delightfully pitiless in person, as if himself an indifferent natural disaster. I obviously read too much Nietzsche in my twenties.

Then, too, as the Republican once noted, reductivism has all the appeal of a dry heave.

Then, further, however much you fight it, you usually feel better after retching.

Go Team Nihilism!

by: brew ho

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:06:06 +0000

Dawkins is an interesting guy. I think he’s actually God. But he needs more confidence in his work.