Saturday, June 20, 2009

Some Reflections on Comment is Free

Following on from below, as commentators here have kindly pointed out, I’ve been given a kicking by Jerry Coyne, Ophelia Benson and PZ Myers. But I’m grateful for the discovery of Butterflies and Wheels which looks among the best of the neo atheist blogs, both in terms of articles and commentators.

One thing I’ve learnt is never descend to PZ Myers’s level. It will only get you into trouble. Another thing is that replying to some comments annoys the people to whom you don’t reply. But since its impossible to respond to everyone, I suppose that is unavoidable.

Finally, it is nice to see my name on the Guardian website’s front page and nice that over six hundred and fifty comments have accrued to my article (so don't click on that link unless you have a broadband connection). I’m very grateful to the editors for using my piece and hopefully I’ll be able to contribute another one soon.



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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Boy oh boy.

If they were angry before, wait till they read your book!

Anonymous said...

I think I lost some IQ points just reading some of those comments. Especially the ones from that overgrown frat-boy Meyers and his little gruppies.

Niall said...

I can't seem to view all of the comments. Can somebody give me a short summary of how the general thrust of the interactions in the comments section went.

Anonymous said...

Mostly it was "faith is stupid, science is pure reason, so you're all stupid". Or words to that effect.

Humphrey said...

Interestingly there wasn't really the proliferation of historical myths that you would have expected. The ones that did come up were the Galileo affair, the alleged prohibitions against vaccination and anaesthesia in childbirth and the medieval church banning dissection. I think Copernicus was also mentioned vaguely and associated with some alleged persecution. People were far more concerned with saying what Jamie mentioned above.

Noons said...

I think the reason we see more of the "science=reason and faith=superstition therefore incompatible" argument instead of the historical examples is because not many people want to challenge historical arguments based on evidence, like James's. So they ignore them and basically say "well...we're still right and you're still delusional, and that's whats really important"

Anonymous said...

So how do we effectively communicate the nature of faith? (or what it should be like, at any rate?)