Attacking individuals vs. nebulous criticism
August 26, 2010 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under religion, science
Here’s an idea that sounds, at first, very nice: when you need to criticize a bad idea, or a common sort of bad behavior, don’t say whose idea it is, or give examples of people engaging in the bad behavior. From a purely pragmatic angle, you don’t want to provoke angry reactions from the people [...]
Continue Reading »Most US Protestants belong to creationist denominations
May 11, 2010 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under biology, religion, science, social and literary criticism, stupidity
Jerry Coyne criticizes a study that makes a big deal of the fact that 63% of believers in the U.S. belong to religious organizations that are officially pro-evolution. Coyne rightly points out that even in pro-evolution denominations, lots of believers in the pews have creationist sympathies. He only briefly mentions, however, the fact that “This [...]
Continue Reading »Tone vs. Content
May 9, 2010 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under dishonesty, language, religion, science, social and literary criticism, stupidity
Russell Blackford has a post arguing that tone is important, even if a lot of the things people say about tone are foolish:
For these sorts of reasons, intelligent discussion of tone is always in order. The problem is likely to be that a lot of discussion of tone is just not very intelligent – how [...]
A sane conservative on global warming
April 26, 2010 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under climate change, politics, science
Jim Manzi explains why, even though he’s skeptical of carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, etc. he insists on telling people that global warming is real:
Earlier in the post you said of the global warming debate that you “haven’t taken the time to study it”. Later in the post you say that “If the issue is truly important [...]
Massimo Pigliucci is a childish, raging, foaming at the mouth fundamentalist with a cavalier attitude toward the substance, rationality and coherence of his arguments
April 16, 2010 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under biology, philosophy, religion, science, social and literary criticism, stupidity
Yesterday, Massimo Pigliucci wrote a post titled “PZ Myers is a witless wanker who peddles pablum.” Pigliucci says he didn’t really mean it, but was just imitating PZ’s overblown rhetoric to make the point that it’s a bad thing. My title is an imitation of Massimo’s approach to post-titling, since he uses all the words [...]
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