Context, details and discussion are here: PZ MYERS VS ISLAMISTS ON EMBRYOLOGY
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They didn’t even seem to notice they were contradicting themselves. Nor did they mind presenting their 7th century society as much more ignorant than they were. This would be a great clip to use in a logical fallacy/critical thinking class, I think I found a dozen there….moving the goal post, straw man, argument from incredulity, argument from authority…just to name a few…
I had to stop a few minutes short of the end for fear the stupid would rub off. Apparently engaging in conversation means not letting your interlocutor get a word in edgewise.
What I found interesting, in both this clip and the clip of Dr Dawkins fielding a question from a member of the same group, was how patient both Dr Myers and Dr Dawkins were in dealing with this nonsense. This doesn’t seem to jibe with the meme being spread regarding the dickishness of New Atheists.
That’s because New Atheists are dicks towards ideas, not people. It’s not readily apparent on the Internet because a lot of people identify really really strongly with their ideas, but there you are.
It is obvious from the accents that these Muslims came over from Britain.
I do remember a debate in Trinity college Dublin(TCD), in 2007 where Irish Muslims debated Omar Brooks (aka Abu Izzadeen, and Anjem Choudary. One of the Irish Muslims, speaking with a Dublin accent, summed up Choudary’s ideology as “..a mental illness”.
It helps that the Muslims in Ireland are comimg from a very diverse range of backrounds. In Germany, the Muslim population is overwhelmingly Turkish/Kurdish. In France, overwhelmingly ex-colonial North Africa. They tend to form ghettos. In Ireland, quite a high proportion are married to non-Muslims.
And there is a large Shia population in Dublin. Shias tend to question more.
What I found interesting, in both this clip and the clip of Dr Dawkins fielding a question from a member of the same group, was how patient both Dr Myers and Dr Dawkins were in dealing with this nonsense. This doesn’t seem to jibe with the meme being spread regarding the dickishness of New Atheists
Yeah, exactly!
When PZ and I did the Steel Cage Death Match Framing Slapdown at the Bell Museum a couple of years ago in which we went up against Chris Mooney and that other guy, people in the audience were actually angry with us because we were all polite. We even went so far as to mutually point out good points that the other side was making. We were, in fact, civil.
How else would we be?
People need to understand better that this literature thing …. which is now manifest in blogs and other on line formats … is an old tool used for centuries by scholars and other debaters, both amateur and master. When you read an essay that is rather biting and intense you are not seeing a person. You are reading an essay written by a person.
Can you imagine if Babe Ruth struck everything and everyone with great force all the time, like he hit the ball with that wooden bat ever time? That is what people who read spirited debate and then expect the debaters to be screaming maniacs are assuming.
MacTurk: That video was taken in Dublin, Ireland.
I know that. I am saying that the Muslim guys are NOT from DUBLIN.
By the accents, they are mostly from the English Midlands. This shows one of the negative aspects of having a passport-free travel zone between the Republic of Ireland and the UK.
Sorry, I often confuse this whole British/English/Whatever thing. And for good reason. As far as I know, Ireland is a British Island. Their political divisions are temporary and annoying. Next glacier comes, Irish rocks and English rocks are all going to be French Dust anyway.
“As far as I know, Ireland is a British Island”. Hmm, possible course in remedial geography?
“Their political divisions are temporary and annoying”.
What a splendid piece of condescension from a citizen of a country with not even 240 years of history!
Hat tip!
Hmm, possible course in remedial geography?
it is. Even wikipedia knows this: The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles.[7] There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom) and Ireland (also described as the Republic of Ireland).
What a splendid piece of condescension from a citizen of a country with not even 240 years of history!
Remedial course in American History!!! The town I grew up in was settled in 16 16 or 1623 by the Dutch, but was a Native American settlement before that, off and on for thousands of years. Great Britain was created in 1707 .