the liars strike

[realthog]

I posted a short while ago about the kind review Jeff VanderMeer has given to my books Discarded Science and Corrupted Science.

The site (it's the official Amazon book blog) has already been polluted by a religious zealot, who writes (http://www.omnivoracious.com/2008/04/what-do-you-fin.html):

FredTownWard on April 07, 2008 at 03:44 PM

The trouble is that unless the critical reviewers on Amazon are simply making things up, John Grant is guiltier of injecting "fraud, ideology, and politics" into science than most of the people he is writing about. 

It is one thing to take a scientifically skeptical attitude towards Creation Science (though in fairness one should apply the same standards to Evolution), it is quite another to engage it anti-Christian bigotry, as John Grant is accused of doing in several reviews. 

Moreover, if Mr. Grant has championed, as he is accused of championing in those critical reviews, the leftwing lunatic fringe ravings about WMD's and al Qaeda in Iraq, the Nazi-like viewpoint on (no longer required because of recent breakthroughs in adult stem-cell research) embryonic stem-cell research, and the cult-like "science has reached a consensus" attitude regarding Global Warming skeptics,

then he is as bad as or worse than anyone he condemns.

In fact, about two of the 14 or so Amazon reviewers play the fundamentalist card. Of those two, one has very obviously not read the book. So this guy (I try to think of a kinder word) lies.

Yep. How would Jesus lie?

Comments

The trouble is that unless the critical reviewers on Amazon are simply making things up, John Grant is guiltier of injecting "fraud, ideology, and politics" into science than most of the people he is writing about. 

It is one thing to take a scientifically skeptical attitude towards Creation Science (though in fairness one should apply the same standards to Evolution), it is quite another to engage it anti-Christian bigotry, as John Grant is accused of doing in several reviews. 

Moreover, if Mr. Grant has championed, as he is accused of championing in those critical reviews, the leftwing lunatic fringe ravings about WMD's and al Qaeda in Iraq, the Nazi-like viewpoint on (no longer required because of recent breakthroughs in adult stem-cell research) embryonic stem-cell research, and the cult-like "science has reached a consensus" attitude regarding Global Warming skeptics,

then he is as bad as or worse than anyone he condemns.

In fact, about two of the 14 or so Amazon reviewers play the fundamentalist card. Of those two, one has very obviously not read the book. So this guy (I try to think of a kinder word) lies.

Yep. How would Jesus lie?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"if you get fundamentalists slamming you, it means you're doing something right!"

Friends keep telling me this, and of course it's true. At the same time, though, it's so depressing to keep running smack into the forces of unreason the whole time. I mean, this guy hasn't read and clearly has no intention of reading the books, yet he's made up his mind in detail about their contents based on a couple of reviews clearly written with an ideological agenda in mind. He goes straight past a fair number of other reviews, which say something entirely different.

Is it any wonder that someone so doggedly intent on maintaining his own ignorance thinks that things like the lack of WMDs in Iraq are "leftwing lunatic fringe ravings", that concern about global warming is just a great big conspiracy, that the Darwinian mechanism of Evolution has not been subjected to scientific testing for well over a century, or that Creationist mythology and Darwinian Evolution are somehow equally balanced counterparts?

dumb and dumber

[scottakennedy.livejournal.com]

There really is no limit to ignorance. A friend of mine, who's a theater director, not to long ago went to the Creation Museum (just for his own entertainment). He summed up the whole experience in one conversation between a mother and daughter he overhead while looking at the Noah's Ark exhibit:

Daughter (20ish): Momma, was Jesus on the ark?
Mother (40ish): If you'd read your bible, you'd know Jesus came before.

And there you have it. Modern American ignorance at its finest.

Re: dumb and dumber

[realthog.livejournal.com]

That is very, very funny, Scott!