[FULL DISCLOSURE: Herman L. Mays, Jr. recently published a somewhat ruthless review of my book Counterargument for God, which may lead some readers to conclude this particular article has been written to gain some measure of revenge. However, after reading the rather vitriolic exchanges between academic/intellectual types such as Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier, I'm convinced that hostile rhetoric is now a perfectly acceptable form of criticism. Therefore, I won't be mincing my words, either.] Professor Herman L. Mays, Jr. teaches at Marshall University, and he's probably a very nice guy (Anybody who can make me laugh out loud can't be all bad in my book). And when I read the following sentence his review of my book, I literally burst out laughing: To say Leonard's book should be taken with a grain of salt gives undue credit to the power of salt to ease the swallowing of the foulest of meals. I have to admit, that's a pretty clever zinger. Could his rhetoric be exaggerated? That's not for me to say. Because my brain often works in strange and unconventional ways, when I read his little quip my mind wandered back in time to revisit an old installment of the comic strip Bloom County, in which Opus the Penguin wrote a scathing review of the movie Benji Saves the Universe. He described the movie as achieving "new levels of badness" -- could I be as equally untalented a writer? Given his perspective as an academic who earns his paycheck teaching evolutionary biology, it shouldn't be terribly surprising that Professor Mays took exception to my criticisms of Darwin's … [Read more...]