One of the most frequent criticisms I receive is that I'm accused of being arrogant, a charge I will not deny. When one becomes extremely confident in the logic of his or her argument, it often comes across as arrogance. And to be brutally honest, I've gotten bored with responding to the average atheist's arguments against God, because they usually aren't very good and don't require a great deal of effort to refute. To those aspiring to become evangelists of atheism (after all, Dr. Richard Carrier offers online courses in "counter apologetics" for atheists) my best advice would be to learn how to think critically -- merely parroting Richard Dawkins, Richard Carrier or Sam Harris won't win the competition for ideas against the likes of John Lennox or William Lane Craig. Or my own arrogant self, for that matter. Quite frankly, the gladiator-style duels with amateur atheists that pass for debate on the internet have become old hat and really don't present much of a challenge for me anymore. They are extremely tedious and very predictable. And after making the same basic argument for the existence of God about a decade now, I've yet to encounter a better argument coming from an atheist trolling the internet. On the other hand, a debate against a serious, well known and well respected nontheist like Michael Shermer could prove to be very interesting and worth the effort for me. Of course, the first challenge will be to engage Mr. Shermer in dialogue, unless I look for an argument to destroy that he's made in the past. He's got plenty of material available on the … [Read more...]
Bill Nye, the sciency guy
Before I get started with this post, let me first say that I was a big fan of "Bill Nye, the Science Guy" when my kids were young -- anything remotely educational was better than "Pokemon" or "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" -- cartoons that weren't mercifully killing brain cells, they were torturing them to death. It's virtually impossible to dislike the public persona. As an added benefit was the catchy jingle for the show intro: "Bill Nye the science guy -- Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!" turned out to be infinitely more pleasant to have permanently etched into your brain than "...heroes on a half shell - Turtle power!" However, even back then I realized that Bill Nye was not actually a science guy, but a television personality playing the role of a science educator of young children. Bill Nye had been an engineer before he entered the world of entertainment as a stand-up comic. "Bill Nye the Science Guy" was literally born on a comedy ensemble show -- it was a character he created that turned out to be a long running joke that people now take very seriously. At a website called Big Think where Nye answers questions from viewers, he is listed in their roster of "experts" as Television Host and Science Educator -- and that catchy, rhyming title of "Bill Nye the Science Guy" appears to give him instant credibility. Basically, Bill Nye merely regurgitates what he's learned from reading popular science books and tries to sound really smart while occasionally reminding his followers that he once was a student of Carl Sagan, presumably to borrow from Sagan's credibility as … [Read more...]
