Empty Carts

The symbiosis of freakazoid religion and reichwing politics has less to do with faux tradition and fake conservatism than it does with the fundamental emptiness of both ideologies.

PZ Myers, discussing superstition vs. science:

I think science is primarily a pragmatic approach that takes whatever tools work to build a better (as evaluated by testing against real-world observations) understanding of how the universe works. My major objection to creationism isn't that it violates a set of dogmatic rules established by scientists playing a formal game, but that it provides no working alternative that I can use. The creationists mistake a series of assertions about history for a bank of operational methods for creating and answering new questions about the world. 

Exclusion isn't quite the right word for what we're doing. Science's job is to fill up the silos of the world with the grain of useful information, and we've found that applying the principles of the scientific method and operating under the guidelines of methodological naturalism means we're productive: we can keep trundling up with wagonloads of corn and wheat and rice. The creationists are showing up with broken-down, essentially empty carts, containing nothing but chaff, a few dirt clods, and some fragrant manure, and they're being turned away because they have nothing to contribute. You're not being excluded if you have nothing to offer.

I imagine that Belfast creationist went back to his clique of ignorant pissants with a sense of triumph, and proudly announced that I had dogmaticly refused to include his offering of hot air and dust as nutritious and fit for a feast, and therefore was yet another tool of the establishment who unfairly discriminated against their way of knowing. Sorry, guy; a wealth of ignorance is no substitute for even a grain of knowledge.

Fascinating, although not surprising, how creationist methods of "debate" - lying, denying facts, misrepresenting the other side's case, etc - resembles so closely how repugs pretend to debate national policy: lying, denying facts, misrepresenting the other side's case, etc.

 

That's probably because the creationists and the repugs - besides having heavily overlapping memberships - have similarly anti-reality goals.  

 

The creationists want everyone to share their superstition and are willing - nay, eager - to eliminate any and all facts in the way.  

 

The repugs want everyone to willingly work as serfs to enrich the privileged few, and are willing - nay, eager - to eliminate any and all obstacles - like our constitutional democracy - in the way.