Wednesday, March 17, 2010

PZ Watch 3.17.10

In response to Melanie Phillips' comments on Richard Dawkins, PZ first analyzes Phillips,
“She's the deranged religious nut who rants and raves about atheists being totalitarian fundamentalists",
and then gives a devastating refutation of several proponents of science / religion compatibility:

Phillips:
“Through such hubristic overreach, Dawkins has opened himself up to attack from quarters that, unlike the theologians he routinely knocks around the park, he cannot so easily disdain.”
“Books taking his arguments apart on his own purported ground of scientific reason have been published by a growing number of eminent scientists and philosophers, including mathematicians David Berlinski and John Lennox, biochemist Alister McGrath, geneticist Francis Collins, and philosopher and recanting atheist Anthony Flew.”
PZ:
“Uh, yes. We can easily disdain them. Berlinski, Lennox, and McGrath are not serious contributors to the debate; Berlinski is a popinjay and Lennox and McGrath are wacky theologians. Collins' arguments for religion are fallacious and trivial, and Flew is in a sad state of senility.”
With that precise logical analysis, the matter is settled.

2 comments:

Wandering Internet Commentator said...

Lennox and McGrath are wacky theologians.

McGrath, maybe, but unless Wikipedia is lying to me again Lennox has published a bunch of peer-reviewed papers in mathematics and is a professor of the subject. Can't see why PZ would dismiss him as 'just a theologian.' At the very least he ought to be in the same category as Collins.

Stan said...

PZ usually engages only the truly paychotic factions of religions which he portrays as representative of all religious thought. All true non-Materialist thinkers are then tarred by association rather than engaged.

PZ uses pejoratives in a constant flow instead of reason; his followers don't know the difference. Perhaps he doesn't either.