Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Writing off pharyngula

Pharyngula turned from a great place to learn biology to a rather mediocre anti-religion/atheist site.

Nobel Laureate physicist Abdus Salam

"Abdus Salam is known to be a devout Muslim, whose religion does not occupy a separate compartment of his life; it is inseparable from his work and family life. He once wrote: "The Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah's created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render thanks with a humble heart."

PZ Myers, on "The unfortunate prerequisites and consequences of partitioning your mind", quotes approvingly a blog post that a person like Abdus Salam has no understanding of science, (I cannot but conclude that this person literally doesn't know why you have to look at things. They may have been taught a certain ritual of experimentation, but they don't understand the reason for it.)

and concludes:

"It's like asking someone if they understand science, and they can recite a string of facts at you … but they haven't absorbed the concept."

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The facts are contrary to what PZ Myers believes them to be, and he has great difficulty adjusting his mind to that.

The blog would be far more interesting if, e.g., it was discussed why it was that Abdus Salam could do great science (like many other great scientists) while partitioning their mind.

Equally painful are the almost all equally-dumbed-down-by-ideology commenters on pharyngula.

This is not an occasional phenomenon, but an ever-growing one that has taken over the blog.

So, I will go there no more.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm. Did my post take, or not?

Anyway, I agree. Something disturbing has happened to many blogs that I used to enjoy. I find PZ's writings about religion to be excruciating to read.

Anonymous said...

Hmm. For some reason, my comments don't show up on the main blog page. It still says 0 comments.

Arun said...

Hehe, somehow my article got posted twice. Anyway, I've corrected that.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, it seems that many atheists are as devout and fanatical in their religion as the most dangerous true believers.