Greg at Thinkers’ Podium has a good entry on that dull and repetitious canard about the “certainty” of ‘new atheism’ (as opposed to old atheism, which didn’t believe there was a God, but cowered in the corner when anyone asked it a question, or something. Like Bertrand Russell). Right on the money too. People like Bert Archer and, in Britain, Andrew Brown are either stupid, dishonest or trolling for page views (note: that’s an inclusive rather than exclusive ‘or’).
Margate, Kent, England
On science and stupidity
Do read this AskMeFi thread. Yet another testament to the smartness of the MeFi crowd. There’s some great stuff in there, like this post by grumblebee:
This reminds of when my wife and went to Jamaica on vacation. About ten years ago, I recovered from my bad math education and became interested in learning the subject. But I never had time. Now, finally, we were going to lie on the beach and I had nothing I had to do. So I packed “Introduction to Calculus” along with the latest P.D. James novel and my iPod.
A couple of days later I was sitting in a beach chair, listening to the waves hitting the shore and happily learning about functions, derivatives and integrals.
Suddenly, I heard an angry voice by my side. I turned and realized the guy next to me was talking to me. He seemed pissed off. He said, “Dude, why don’t you relax?”
I said, “Excuse me?”
He said, “You’re on vacation. Why don’t you put the fucking work away and enjoy yourself.”
I said, “This isn’t work. I’m reading this for fun.”
He looked even more pissed, said “Whatever,” and turned away from me. It was clear that I was offending him by reading a math book on the beach.
Replace ‘Introduction to Calculus’ with plenty of other books and I’ve got lots of similar stories. Sadly none involve sitting on a beach in Jamaica. I have had positives though - once I was on the train reading Gross, Levitt and Lewis’ The Flight From Science and Reason, and someone asked me if they could have the full details of the book because it looked interesting. Those experiences outweigh all the bad ‘uns.
