Monday, March 17, 2008

Here's one for the creationists!

Earlier today, our old pal Dan Marvin, eager for attention as usual, tried to threadjack the comments about the blog meetup following Dawkins' talk on Wednesday. He implied he'd have a real stumper to ask Dawkins if he could be there, and then trotted out some more silly crap from AiG about the appendix, and how he seems to think the recent discovery that it actually seems to have a function presents some kind of problem for evolution. Typical know-nothing creationist idiocy, which I quickly spanked with some information from TO. Then, being an evil mean old atheist, I slapped him around with the usual batch of personal insults and sent him packing. Hey, I gotta keep my horns and my pointy tail sharp, don't I?

But I haven't been able to stop chuckling about the whole exchange this whole time. Because it's ever so entertaining to know that there are these clowns out there who, in classic Dunning-Kruger Effect fashion, think they know more about subjects like biology than the leading experts in the field. Of whom Dawkins happens to be one.

So I thought I'd make an offer to creationists who won't be in Austin on Wednesday, one they just can't refuse. I will be your proxy. No, I'm serious. All you have to do is this:

Submit to the comments the question you would want to ask Dawkins during the Q&A. Make it as h-a-r-d as you can think of! A real toughie! Squeeze your brain like an old mop and come up with a real humdinger. No going easy on the man, now. If you've got a question you think would leave him slack-jawed in stupefaction in front of an audience of hundreds of people, entitling you to do a little Snoopy dance all around Hogg Auditorium singing "Pwned in the Name of Jeezus!" at the top of your lungs, then, by all means, ask it.

I will pick the best question of the batch and present it to Dawkins myself. That's right. I'll be your proxy.

In fact, considering that it may be difficult to get the question in at the Q&A, I will introduce myself and present the question to him at his book signing Wednesday afternoon. (Though I will still try to ask at the Q&A; I suspect those will be highly limited due to time, but you never know.) If he's too busy at the book signing, or if store employees are just rushing people through the autograph line like a conveyer belt, which could happen if the place is as jam-packed as it's likely to be, then I will ask him politely if I may have a moment of his time after the signing is over.

Now, there is just one simple rule. Please try to follow it, creationists. Because you know how we like to be mean and insulting, and so if you demonstrate that you can't even follow one simple instruction, well, that will just give us godless amoral heathens an excuse to make jokes about you involving inbreeding and sex with indignant farm animals and what have you. So just do this: Post your question in the form of a simple, easily phrased question. Don't cutpaste a ten-paragraph page from Answers in Genesis or the Discovery Institute and then go, "So what about that?" Obviously, there won't be time for anything like that. Just present the one, on-point, direct question you'd get to ask if you were able to attend Wednesday night's talk.

Feel free to ask silly shit like "How do you feel abot the fact yer gowing 2 HELL!!1!??" if you like. But that's not a good question, you know. Really, I plan to pick the best, smartest question, and so take this as an opportunity to show us arrogant, know-it-all atheist assholes that you're not as dumb as we think you are and are in fact quite a bit smarter, thank you very much.

So there you are. Let's all play Stump Dawkins. Just submit your question, I'll pick the toughest, best one (I'll even ask Kazim and Tracie and the other regular posters here to weigh in with their opinion of the best question), and ask that question to Dawkins personally on Wednesday. I'll even arrange to record myself doing it, so you can get your answer straight from God's...ahem...Dawkins' mouth.

Can't get much fairer than that, right?

Bring it!


PS: To our regular godless readers: Think of this as one of those trivia board games, where another player has gotten an easy question they can't answer to save their lives, and you're sitting there clenching your jaw going, "Oh god, I know this one I know this one!" In other words, please resist the urge to answer the questions that come up yourself in the comment thread...at least until after Wednesday. At that point, all the non-picked questions can be answered freely by any of you. For the time being, remember these are creationists' questions for Dawkins, and so let's get his reply first. I'll be leaving comment moderation on to ensure everybody plays nice. (Lui, put that cricket bat down. Down! Thank you.)

13 comments:

  1. You are asking them to construct a question by themselves. I think your standards are too high

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  2. Heh. I banned Dan from my blog long ago when he was trying to host propaganda graphics on the iron chariots wiki's server. Remember that? Yeah. What a turd.

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  3. "please resist the urge to answer the questions that come up yourself in the comment thread"

    What, even the ones where the answer is, "because you're an uneducated fucking retard with the reading comprehension of a two year old chimp"? Because I'm not sure that my self control is that good...

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  4. aerik: So you remember those graphics as well. Funny, because Dan tried to say I was lying when I mentioned those. He'll say anything, poor chap.

    lui: I'm genuinely interested to know where the creationists have the greatest doubts about evolution.

    Me too. I reiterate to creationists that my offer is the real deal. Submit a sincere, intelligent question and I'll be happy to present it to Dawkins.

    Paul: Come on. You can wait till Wednesday. Anyway, so far it looks like they're all hiding under their desks, but we may yet get a few good questions out there. I'd like to see what they'd have to ask if they were in a position to meet Dawkins themselves.

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  7. Hi Martin,

    Could you ask him this question?
    Background from here...


    Professor Dawkins,

    On page 92 of "The God Delusion", you present a 4th option to CS Lewis' famous "Lord-Liar-Lunatic" trilemma with respect to the identity of Jesus Christ, namely that he was actually mistaken.
    Why is it that you rarely if ever extend such an understanding to today's theists? If you met a man who said there was a pink elephant in a 10*10 room, would you say that the man could be "honestly mistaken?" How much less would you say that a man who thought he was the pink elephant in the room was "honestly mistaken?"
    If Jesus could be "honestly mistaken", can not then all theists?


    Thanks Martin for your generous offer. Good luck in asking the questions! I bet there will be a lot of people and a lot of questions.

    Peace,
    Rhology

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  8. I never heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Thank you for that!

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  9. Thanks for the submission, Rho.

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  10. I can answer that -- but out of respect for Martin's rules, I'll have to wait till Wednesday or Friday.

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  11. Hopefully I'm not breaking any rules, but I posted the two papers I have on the effect (the original, and the second one they did). The link is: http://web.mac.com/badger3k/Site/Education.html

    If I am wrong in doing this, please let me know.

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  12. This is fine, since you're not really answering any direct question that's been asked yet. Thanks for posting the link.

    If some of our other religious readers don't step up soon, looks like Rho will have his question chosen by default. (It is a good question, anyway.)

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  13. Hang on, gang. You'll get your chance.

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