I know the blogosphere seems like a self-feeding monster, to you. And you’re probably right. But I’m going to link to something Dan J wrote, because it argues my position better than I could hope to.
Believe me sir when I say I am behind you. I agree to some small degree with both Chris Mooney (regarding mostly that incivility gets your meaning drowned out in drama), and (to a much greater degree) DuWayne Brayton (regarding that screaming at idiots has a utility function), but neither of them compare to the truth you spew forth from your envenomed fingertips onto the keyboard of life. We are the thin end of the wedge. We, the reasonable, those that are swayed by logic and proper argumentation, are the only real bulwark against the religious nonsense lapping at the shores of the public consciousness.
Maybe one day I’ll explain why I’m all confrontationalist about this stuff, even though I believe mostly in civility in argumentation. Or maybe I already have, and it’s in my Religion archives. I’m not even sure myself! It’s like a game!
Either way, the take-away message is:
Many thanks, kind sir. 🙂
We of the “wedge” have to stick together!
Your mention of wedge, and my back-allusion to it, has provenance, as well. I’m sure you’ve probably read http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html — the Wedge Strategy document outlining how creationists could get their beliefs inserted into science classrooms. If this isn’t a direct affront worthy of a counter-initiative, I don’t know what is.
What Mooney doesn’t seem to get (probably by virtue of only fighting on the evolution front, and growing up a free-thinker without the argumentative benefit of being steeped in the arguments to begin with), is that the deep end of religiosity is more insidious than it lets on. The moderates on the shallow end aren’t the ones we’re being uncivil toward, even if they might take some unintentional collateral damage from time to time. It’s the ones that are taking the first swings that we’re actually going after actively.
By the by, either my Firefox is broken, or your “Leave a comment” link is. It could very well be my Firefox, as since upgrading to 2.8 the Insert Image function is no longer popping up a window…
I think that we who promote science over mysticism have a disadvantage. I think it’s common when it comes to what are seen as liberal vs. conservative issues. The disadvantage is that we don’t always stick together as a whole, while the conservatives/fundamentalists/whatever do. We think that it’s okay for each of us to have disagreements on some issues, yet still be civil and cordial, and work together on other issues. The conservatives seem to look down on anyone who disagrees with any part of their “party line”. None of them want to be looked down on, so they all try to conform. I’d rather be a non-conformist, myself. When was the last time you encountered an atheist group with a “five year plan”? When was the last time you encountered an atheist “group”?
Just fixed the comment problem. It seems that the 2.8 upgrade set all new posts to default to disallow comments.