The Empiricism Strikes Back
I don’t think Dinesh D’Souza respects his readers very much:
About a hundred years ago, two anti-religious bigots named John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White wrote books promoting the idea of an irreconcilable conflict between science and God. The books were full of facts that have now been totally discredited by scholars. But the myths produced by Draper and Dickson continue to be recycled. They are believed by many who consider themselves educated, and they even find their way into the textbooks. In this article I expose several of these myths…
So it was anti-religious bigots who drove a wedge between faith and empirical observation, eh? Good to know. And they used “totally discredited” facts to do this, you say? Those rascals!
ABOVE: His facts thus marshalled, Dinesh D’Souza sends off another column to his publisher.
According to the atheist narrative, the medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat until the brilliant scientists showed up in the modern era to prove that it was round. In reality, educated people in the Middle Ages knew that the earth was round. In fact, the ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. knew the earth was a globe. They didn’t need modern science to point out the obvious.
Then why is Galileo famous? (On edit: Uh, not for this. At some point during this post’s evolution, I began to conflate the round-earth theory with heliocentricism. Coincidence … or not?)
We read in various books about the great debate between Darwin’s defender Thomas Henry Huxley and poor Bishop Wilberforce. As the story goes, Wilberforce inquired of Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his father or mother’s side, and Huxley winningly responded that he would rather be descended from an ape than from an ignorant bishop who was misled people about the findings of science. A dramatic denouement, to be sure, but the only problem is that it never happened. There is no record of it in the proceedings of the society that held the debate, and Darwin’s friend Joseph Hooker who informed him about the debate said that Huxley made no rejoinder to Wilberforce’s arguments.
Setting aside D’Souza’s crude paraphrasing of Huxley’s supposed quote, what is this paragraph supposed to prove? That Huxley was left stammering and impotently shaking his fist while some fellow in a scholar’s gown placed a ribbon around Wilberforce’s neck as the bishop raised his arms in triumph before a noisily weeping audience? That the debate never happened? It’s hard to say, exactly, but I suspect D’Souza just wants us to know that atheists aren’t nearly as smart and witty as they’d have you believe.
As myth would have it, when Darwin’s published his Origin of Species, the scientists lined up on one side and the Christians lined up on the other side. In reality, there were good scientific arguments made both in favor of Darwin and against him.
Hasn’t this nitwit every heard of peer review?
We read in textbooks about how Galileo went to the Tower of Pisa and dropped light and heavy bodies to the ground. He discovered that they hit the ground at the same time, thus refuting centuries of idle medieval theorizing. Actually Galileo didn’t do any such experiments; one of his students did. The student discovered what we all can discover by doing similar experiments ourselves: the heavy bodies hit the ground first! As historian of science Thomas Kuhn points out, it is only in the absence of air resistance that all bodies hit the ground at the same time.
No teacher has ever received credit for work produced by one of his students. Further, what point is made in this paragraph? That Galileo didn’t produce any scientific observations? That he was a credit-hogging blowhard that we should all hold in low esteem? That, in fact, anyone who’s ever bothered to replicate this experiment actually discovered that objects fall at the same rate of speed, and not Galileo? Or that Galileo was very stupid indeed because he did not draw the same conclusions as later scientists who studied his (alleged) work?
Copernicus advanced the heliocentric theory … more than half a century before Galileo. But Copernicus had no direct evidence, and he admitted that there were serious obstacles from experience that told against his theory … Galileo defended heliocentrism, but one of his most prominent arguments was wrong.
I’m beginning to suspect Dinesh D’Souza doesn’t know very much about science.
The Church’s view of heliocentrism was hardly a dogmatic one. When Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo he said, “(W)e should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But this is not a thing to be done in haste, and as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me.” Galileo had no such proofs.
Why, it sounds almost as if the cardinal posed a challenge he knew Galileo could not meet. Therefore, when Galileo could not prove everything that he suspected to be true, he was proven wrong. The sun could very well still revolve around the earth, for all Galileo knew. Asshole.
“Galileo Was A Victim of Torture and Abuse” … is perhaps the most recurring motif, and yet it is entirely untrue. Galileo was treated by the church as a celebrity. When summoned by the Inquisition, he was housed in the grand Medici Villa in Rome. He attended receptions with the Pope and leading cardinals. Even after he was found guilty, he was first housed in a magnificent Episcopal palace and then placed under “house arrest” although he was permitted to visit his daughters in a nearby convent and to continue publishing scientific papers.
What he’s basically saying here is that it’s no big deal to be forced to publicly deny observable reality and suffer the resulting personal embarrassment, so long as you get to mingle with the ruling elite and be provided with elegant accommodations. I suspect this passage says more about Dinesh D’Souza than his subject matter.
Galileo was neither charged nor convicted of heresy. He was charged with teaching heliocentrism in specific contravention of his own pledge not to do so. This is a charge on which Galileo was guilty. He had assured Cardinal Bellarmine that given the sensitivity of the issue, he would not publicly promote heliocentrism.
Didn’t this column start out with the claim that heliocentrism had been widely known by educated people for more than 2,000 years before Galileo was even born? Why would the church bother asking him not to teach about it?
Galileo was right about heliocentrism, but we know that only in retrospect because of evidence that emerged after Galileo’s death. The Church should not have tried him at all, although Galileo’s reckless conduct contributed to his fate. Even so, his fate was not so terrible.
In summation, atheists published a book about 100 years ago that caused the Catholic church to find Galileo guilty during the Inquistion of breaking his promise not to tell people about something they already knew, because scientists are hotshots who think they know it all and also live in a nicer house than you.
Your check’s in the mail, Dinesh!
Then why is Galileo famous?
Not for anything to do with the world being round, given that not only had educated people believed the world was round ever since the time of the ancient Greeks, but that he lived a hundred years after Magellan proved the world was round by sailing around it. Galileo is famous for helping to provide evidence for Copernicus’s theory that the earth goes around the sun, and not vice versa.
Didn’t this column start out with the claim that heliocentrism had been widely known by educated people for more than 2,000 years before Galileo was even born? Why would the church bother asking him not to teach about it?
No. It started with the claim that the world’s roundness has been widely known by educated people for more than 2000 years before Galileo was even born. They are not the same thing.
So who is the most dishonest columnist – D’Souza or Mark Steyn?
Dinny, Dinny, Dinny. The “Everybody thought the Earth was flat” myth stopped being taught at least as far back as the ’80s when I was in grade school. Please do try to keep up with the rest of the class or else I’ll have to send you to the principal’s office.
Then why is Galileo famous?
Because they didn’t know that the earth orbited the sun.
They thought the sun orbited a round earth.
Why, it sounds almost as if the cardinal posed a challenge he knew Galileo could not meet. Therefore, when Galileo could not prove everything that he suspected to be true, he was proven wrong. The sun could very well still revolve around the sun, for all Galileo knew. Asshole.
Why, we see this very chain of logic in place today!
Prove to me that we’re losing the invasion of Iraq? What’s that? You can’t, because we haven’t defined victory?
Therefore, we must be winning, since you can’t prove we’re losing!
And in truth, it was Columbus who “proved” the earth was round, not Galileo, if you believe Washington Irving.
Wow.
Just … wow.
I … hold on a second … I need a minute to recover my sense … after being blinded … dazed … confused … by the stuning and stupid stupidness … of Dinesh D’Souza’s … stunningly stupid … stupidity.
D’Souza is a complete tool, & writes like a junior high tool. He may indeed be dumbing it down for his audience of mouth-breathers. Isn’t AOL Opinion one of his major outlets? (I don’t have much respect for his readers either.)
I’m not sure D’Souza believes that because the earth is spherical that the sun doesn’t orbit it; after all, we are the crown of creation, & it would just make sense for God to make everything revolve around us.
And why is despising people stupid enough to believe fairy stories & to use them as a basis for their & others’ lives bigotry? If you’re foolish enough to believe such crap, & enough of a jerk to try to impose it on others, you deserve to be despised & held in contempt.
Also, a Happy B-Day wish to g, who I s’pect is a mere yr. younger than I, & if born today shares it w/ Jimi Hendrix. (Another Pacific Northwesterner.)
Dinesh is just using an old, tried, and true tactic found in religious attacks on science – use the adaptability of science, and the fact that the consensus on some issues has changed over time, to imply that science is nothing more than wishy-washy fads and “Scientists are flip-floppers”.
OK.
(Deep breath.)
…
No … not ready yet … must lie down.
So did both objects hit the ground at the same time, or did the heavier object hit first? Or is the ecclesiastical jury still out on that one?
Columbus’s actual deal was that he thought the planet was smaller than it is, so he could reach China/India by sailing west. He was wrong, but lucky that the “New” World was in the way.
According to the atheist narrative, the medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat until the brilliant scientists showed up in the modern era to prove that it was round. In reality, educated people in the Middle Ages knew that the earth was round. In fact, the ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. knew the earth was a globe. They didn’t need modern science to point out the obvious.
Now, I’m just a caveman, and unfamiliar with your “calendar,” but isn’t it true that the ancient Greeks were not, in fact, Christians, having been born 500 years before Christ?
Galileo defended heliocentrism, but one of his most prominent arguments was wrong.
He’s referring to Galileo’s hypothesis of tide production, but I wouldn’t consider that to be Galileo’s best evidence of heliocentrism. The phases of Venus were considered by Kepler to be definitive proof, and I agree. It is a perfect example of two competing hypotheses (geocentrism and heliocentrism) making testable, conflicting predictions to the outcome of an experiment. If Venus did not show phases, heliocentrism would have suffered a large blow.
Of course it is completely unnecessary for me to point this out, because the article seems to be pretty non-sensical. I don’t consider the fact that I know a whole lot more physics than Galileo or Newton to be proof that they were just stupid. When scientific knowledge advances, it strengthens the foundation rather than just building on top of what is already there (like a tower on a small little pedistal). The fact that Galileo made a mistake (which he did sometimes – tides, sunspots, etc), does not destroy everything that was built from his base.
Anybody with half a brain can see that Dinesh D’Souza is just joking and can’t be nearly as big an idiot as this column makes him appear.
It’s totally obvious.
And the next time I see this exact line of reasoning scribbled out and published in the letters to the editor section of the local newspaper, I will just assume that it’s another Republican going along with the gag.
Despite your evidence, we are not as stupid as we seem, because we believe ourselves to be masters of sophistry.
Liberals. Hmf.
Also, if Dinesh bothered to check Wiki he’d see his own people came up with a heliocentric model about 700 years before the Ancient Greeks and 2K years before teh most awesomest and smrtest Western Europeans.
Hey! According to Dinesh, it’s just all par-tays and good times at Aung San Suu Kyi’s crib!
The damage done to the prestige of organized religion by science can never be recovered, and even our great wingnut welfare queen knows this, so he’s reduced to grumbling about minor details from hundreds of years ago. It’s like a modern French military historian contentiously yammering about how the Maginot Line never surrendered. It’s utterly irrelevant, even if true.
Dinesh D’Souza is now my favorite wingnut. I wish I had his rookie card.
to paraphrase the old saw, you can tell a Dartmouth man, but you can’t tell him much.
Add one more to the list of schools my progeny need not apply to (Yale, U of Chicago, Stanford, now Dartmouth) . . .
A recent comment thread at Making Light touches on science as the new statistics, or science, bad science, and “scientific study” as the denominations therein.
According to the atheist narrative, the medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat
Um…he’s lost me at the first sentance. What atheist narrative is he talking about?
OK.
Ready now.
I’m assuming that D’Souza heard there was a contest for stupidest conservative commentator and, fearful that Jonah Goldberg or Thomas Sowell would win, he snapped into action, went online and found some extracts from “The Big Golden Book of Republican Talking Points: Science Edition,” hastily scanned a few pertinent pages, and, through the power of his mighty pseudo-intellectual Wurlitzer, tossed his imperfectly understood, illogical, pretentious, stereotypical thoughts onto the page, unencumbered with factual or rational information. (The same way he writes all his columns.)
I’d say this put him over the top.
Congratulations, Dinesh!
I was actually just reading a book about maps and cartography through the centuries. While it is true that the Greeks (the educated Greeks at least and possibly others) had suspicions that the world was orb-like, they had difficulties describing it mathematically and problems rendering three dimensions onto a two dimensional map. They had to start somewhere and cartography is still a developing science owing much to the first map makers over 2000 years ago. The idea that the world was a spheroid fell out of use in the Dark Ages replaced in most respects with the model proposed by an Egyptian Monk named Cosmas. He reasoned that the world and the heavens were something like a great barrel vault, like a basilica cathedral. This was what most churches were built like so he made the world fit the schema of holy architecture. The inhabited part was the great expanse of the floor (or the altar). Medieval thought, largely based on Church dogma and early Christian philosophy made use of this model, perhaps not because they believed the world was the floor of a barrel vault, but because this reasoning was a good analogy for relating God, the heavens, the earth together. The idea of a round world did not completely fall out of use, it seems that many people commonly thought of the world like a ball of string or a pig bladder (which people blew up into a sort of balloon). None of this really made a difference in people’s lives or even Church education/dogma until people like Copernicus and Galileo started building off of spherical earth and heliocentric models. This raised the hackles of those with a stake in the older reasoning who also happened to be in power, thus they first disagreed, then began to outlaw the new observational based models. It was only sometime in the 1900s that the Church felt it should exonerate Galileo.
Just some flavor comments for you.
(I probably shouldn’t have called Dinesh D’Souza a pseudo-intellectual but I was being nice. I mean, what do we have without civility? Without civility, you might as well be a Republican.)
Ya know, if you dropped a 10 pound weight and a 20 pound weight off the Tower of Pisa onto Dinish they’s pretty much hit his head at the same time.
I’m thinking someone already tried that experiment.
The sun could very well still revolve around the sun, for all Galileo knew. Asshole.
Wha’? Don’t be a McArdle, check your work.
As historian of science Thomas Kuhn points out, it is only in the absence of air resistance that all bodies hit the ground at the same time.
Meaning that it was the size/shape of the objects, not the weight, which determined when they’d hit the ground. So the heavier one, assuming it was larger, should have hit after the lighter/smaller one. I’m confused.
The whole thing is amazing. Dinny-Din-Din debunks a few legends (not myths) of science, but ignores all of the myths & fantasies of Catholicism. How long did it take the Catholics to admit Gailileo was right?
The sun could very well still revolve around the sun, for all Galileo knew. Asshole.
That would be a sweet trick for the sun to pull off, gettin’ all sneaky and revolving around itself.
Travis, please fix, sir.
In fact, the ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. knew the earth was a globe. They didn’t need modern science to point out the obvious.
Doesn’t know much about history either. The common belief amongst literate Hellenes in the 5th c. BCE was that the world was – as described in Homer – disk shaped. Pythagoras had proposed that the world was spherical in the 6th c. but it was considered a fringe belief (Somewhat on a par with Anaximenes belief (also 6th c.) that the world was rectangular) until Aristotle supported it in the 4th c. BCE.
Thanks, M. Bouffant and Insane. Fixed!
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
But Dinesh is writing for a specific audience, people who have no idea what a straw man argument is, so just go with it. Why should Dinesh try to come up with something that’s harder – or even a little challenging – to refute? That extra effort is wasted on the people he is writing for.
And Dinesh, if he’s like the conservatives I know, is very, very lazy. Anybody can write a book if they don’t care about intellectual honesty or looking stupid to honest, decent people. Look at Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly.
So did both objects hit the ground at the same time, or did the heavier object hit first?
They both hit at the same time. Assuming, that is, that the objects have negligible wind resistance (two dumbells, for instance). You would think the heavier object would fall faster because it weighs more–but because it weighs more it is also harder to move.
And, since it wasn’t Galileo who conducted the experiment but his student, I must now turn in my Atheist Bible and renounce Darwin and start going to church. Although if I remember right, Galileo proposed the experiment which led to someone else carrying it out (Galileo was thinking “suppose I drop something and measure how fast it falls, then cut it in half and drop the two halves as one–should I really expect them to fall more slowly? no, of course not”) so maybe I don’t have to start flagellating myself just yet.
They didn’t need modern science to point out the obvious.
I love how he slipped in the word “modern,” which makes his statement almost true but entirely irrelevant. Pythagoras was doing science. I don’t see why it’s relevant that he wasn’t a modern.
(And it’s not obvious that the world is a globe, and people didn’t necessarily know that eclipses were related to the earth’s shadow, etc., etc….)
According to the atheist narrative, the medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat until the brilliant scientists showed up in the modern era to prove that it was round.
What atheist believes this? D’Souza doesn’t say.
the heavy bodies hit the ground first!…it is only in the absence of air resistance that all bodies hit the ground at the same time.
Attention editor! Attention editor! Cleanup in paragraph 6! (Do you suppose that D’Souza realizes that heaviness and air resistance are different?)
He was charged with teaching heliocentrism in specific contravention of his own pledge not to do so.
I’m not sure this is totally true, but even so it disproves D’Souza’s point about the Church. He was ordered not to teach heliocentrism. Why do you suppose the Church did that, Dinesh dear?
In reality, there were good scientific arguments made both in favor of Darwin and against him.
True. For instance, Darwin had not one inkling of an iota of an idea how characteristics were passed from parent to child. Today, of course, we not only know about genetics but have used it to clone animals.
The World is Flat. I said so and it’s true.
I really need to switch my political leanings and get me some of that wingnut welfare.
No writing skills or knowlege required- just open your yap and a dumptruck full of money backs up. I’ll be in tiger skin rugs and ugly fake marble in no time!
We read in textbooks about how Galileo went to the Tower of Pisa and dropped light and heavy bodies to the ground
This leads me to wonder how many textbooks Mr D’Souza has actually encountered.
Maybe he read it in “The Strawmen of Gor”.
Is it possible that Galileo was, oh, I don’t know, on the ground, near the landing zone, seeing which object hit first, while his student/research assistant was doing the actual object dropping?
I want one of those felt paintings of a conquistador. Then my life would be perfect.
Dinesh D’Loser
The Catholic Church didn’t apologize for the, ahem, misunderstanding with Galileo until 1993.
I learned that from a Far Side calendar.
Is that the one where he has to fight his way out of the Land of the False Dichotomies?
I’ll be in tiger skin rugs and ugly fake marble in no time!
I want one of those felt paintings of a conquistador. Then my life would be perfect.
Hey, you hippies stay out of my house!! And keep away from my blonde wife. And my nice cars.
r4d20:
He’s also playing a version of the “If I discredit your icons, you are left with nothing! Bwa ha ha!” game. A Catholic acquaintance of mine tried this over Francis Crick’s racism, too, thinking he had me on the horns of a dilemma: either disavow Crick’s achievements, or capitulate to Crick’s racism.
They seem to fundamentally misunderstand the mechanism of science, mistaking it for the sort of transferable cult of personality that movement conservatives built around Reagan and Bush 43. Crick is a racist jerk, but that doesn’t say anything about the structure and mechanisms of DNA; Ernst Haeckel published fraudulent pictures, but that has no bearing upon whether or not deep homologies exist in vertebrate embryos; whether Huxley took down Bishop Whatsis doesn’t make a bit of difference to the explanatory power of evolutionary theory.
The fact is, the sun revolves around the earth. You liberal elites refuse to accept the evidence of your own eyes!
(No misspelings this time!)
Using his enormous fallacy, that’s the one.
Hasn’t this nitwit ever heard of peer review?
You’ve read his work. What do you think?
Veering even more off-topic, I found something called Houseplants of Gor.
I haven’t read any Gor novels for at least twenty years, but I remember the style well enough to find this excrutiatingly funny.
D’Souza wrote:
You mean to tell me that D’Souza doesn’t have the balls to speak out against this pathetic heliocentrism crap? What a gutless wimp. Next he’ll be backing down on the doctrine of infant damnation.
D’Souza also purportedly wrote:
This is not your beautiful house! This is not your beautiful wife! How did you get here?
Robert M. said,
James Watson is a racist jerk, but that doesn’t say anything about the structure and mechanisms of DNA
Fixed. Francis Crick was a blowhard, but I don’t remember any foot-in-mouth episodes involving racism.
All references to Strawmen of Gor should credit Hoosier X.
Dinesh D’Souza is now my favorite wingnut. I wish I had his rookie card.
I’d be willing to trade it to you, but only for the infamous Kaye Grogan “error” card . . . you know, the one where her stats were printed in actual English; instead of . . . “Grogan”-ese!.
That pretty much proves that “medival Christians” who knew about the Greek theories and rejected them because of their religious interpretations. John William Draper pointed out this fact by using, not myth, but the writings of St. Augustine. Kinda hard to debunk something the most prominent religous thinker puts down in writing. Regardless, the point of D’Souza’s article is not about debunking any myths; the point is to keep saying that science and atheism are the same thing often enough.
I’ll be in tiger skin rugs and ugly fake marble in no time!
I did not need that mental image of Kaye Grogan’s wardrobe.
Will someone rid me of this noisesome “author”?
Some questions:
Who is this Denish DSouza and why should I care?
This person actually gets paid to write this sh*t. Obviously they have little to no shame, but where is the editor in all this crap? Doesn’t the editor have some responsibilities to ensure that something at least resembling an article written at an adult level is printed/posted?
Hey, you kids! Get offen my lawn! You’re scaring my kajira!
Whoops. )c:
Well, hopefully my otherwise well-written and cogent (i can has validation?) point stands.
Hoosier, that’s is priceless. It’s almost as good a parody as Doon was of Dune…
You know, I was asking myself that.
I want one of those felt paintings of a conquistador.
You could always buy a regular painting of a conquistador and feel it up yourself…
At Townhall.com? Dude, have you ever read any of that swill?
Editors there don’t seem to have any responsibilities. I’m not sure Clown Hall even has editors.
Thanks, Smut Clyde. You are awesome.
(Here’s the wikipedia entry on Gor for all the Nosians who are wondering “WTF?”)
(For the record, I can’t think of a single reason to recommend them.)
“Galileo Was A Victim of Torture and Abuse” … is perhaps the most recurring motif, and yet it is entirely untrue. Galileo was treated by the church as a celebrity.
This seems to be the current party line among Bushist dead-enders. Someone was claiming the other week that placing jurists and political rivals under house arrest is OK, because their accommodation is so luxurious.
[looks optimistically in the direction of J–, hoping for a link to the S,N! post in question].
Of course it helps if the President / army leader who rounds up the opposition is a True Friend of Democracy ©.
Anyway, I can’t help suspecting that D’Souza is re-opening the Galileo file — a cold case if ever there was one — mainly as a way to push this idea that house arrest is just another form of tough love.
Notice phenomena. Collect data. Form hypothesis. Design experiments to test hypothesis. Perform experiments. Collect data. Reform hypothesis based on experimental results. Retest. Collect data. Formulate theory. Send for peer review. NEW THEORY!!!! or not. Depends. Do ANY republicans understand these concepts? I realize I have shortcut scientific method here, but Great Satan’s Underwear, I can’t believe the stupid.
Well, I did rename an engraved paving stone in Tampa “The Idiot Stone” for a reason. People paying to have “Evolution: The Opiate of the Uninformed”, it was so reassuring to me right when I was in full fleeing mode from fundies.
Bob–Coulter spent 4 chapters in a book trying to disprove evolutionary science. FOUR PAINFUL FUCKING CHAPTERS. No, they DO NOT get it. I don’t even want to know how many people bought that book and then believed it. You know, she’s a lawyer, she surely knows her evolutionary biology. Just look at the snarky comments about Steven j Gould! Who knew maligning the dead could be so much fun!
Dinesh, same thing. Again and again.
Happy Birthday Officially now, g!
Was DeeDee trying to say–I’m sure as hell not going to read it–that there actually isn’t a conflict between religion and science???? Then how come his fundamentalist rethuglican co-religionists keep fighting to keep actual science out of the schools? He’s not only a screaming idiot, whose main claim to fame is arguing we should fight terra by instituting our own version of sharia, but he doesn’t know which side he’s on. Sweet jeebus, the stupid burns.
Stupid stupid…how the fuck is this guy considered a “scholar” by anyone? What the fucking hell was the POINT of that stupid article? I suspect it doesn’t really have any “point” aside from vaguely implying that atheists and scientists are bad in some undefined way. Pathetic.
Skink–where is that stone? I’m in Tampa, and may have to go see it.
This song and dance is to make very small people (in mind and body) feel
“good” about themselves. If you sucked at math and science at Bumfuck
Egypt Highschool and resented teh eggheads and now work a shitty job
and have no life, nothing is more gratifying than a takedown of those
“stoopid Morans”. Same with money, sex and even race. Satisfaction does
not come from gaining your own wisdom, money, sex or respect (since it’s
obvious you CAN’T), it comes from denying or destroying it in others.
D’Loosah knows all this; he’s just happy to get PAID keeping the rubes and chumps in their Stuck State. Raging, ignorant, poor and unloved. Like Gary. You don’t have to understand anything, you just have to know that libbruls are wrong, Wrong, WRONG, bwahahahaha. Takes them back to the good old days when they and 9 of their ‘friends’ could push some ‘nerd’ into the mud. Sure he called you a loser first, and you ARE a loser, but who (with the help of 9 friends and a suckerpunch) is in the mud? Huh? Wingnut SOP. Being covered in mud doesn’t change the fact that the loser is a LOSER, but the wingnut will NEVER understand that.
My brother in law knows about that stone.
the point is to keep saying that science and atheism are the same thing often enough.
But wingnuts also claim that atheism is a religion. So that would make science a religion, which accomplishes…well, something to wingnuts, I suppose.
Dinesh is right about one thing, though. John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White did, in fact, write books.
Hard to imagine an idiot like D’Souza ever seeing print if his masters hadn’t needed a token to smear Anita Hill.
Dude, your 15 minutes were over … a long time ago. Now you’re just another suck-up whose sense of conventional wisdom could net you a latte, so long as you’ve got two bucks.
.
OK fine, Dinesh, I won’t vote for Galileo in the next election. Maybe your next article can convince me not to vote for Darwin. Keep up the great work!
Robert–someone else asked me on this site for the exact location when I was in Tampa, so I posted the video she requested. It’s in Ybor right there on 7th. You can tell better in the video, since there are so many stones in general.
Fundies are just usually less of a problem for me in Florida than in the Midwest, so it pissed me off!
It’s clear that D’Souza both has little knowledge of what he’s writing about and that he’s a complete buttmunch.
Sadly, this piece makes it clear that Travis G. has little knowledge about the topic either. Maybe pick up a copy of Redondi’s Galileo Heretic or Santillaba;s The Crime Of Galileo.
I don’t know how the earlir link to John William Draper failed, other than my utter lack of html, so here it is: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/hcbrs10.txt
DD’s article did make me want to read this book, so in that regard it was very enlightening in a backhanded way.
In two of D’Souza’s big think-piece articles he take from Kant for an argument against empiricism and an argument for the existence of the soul. He doesn’t understand the first thing about Kant. It’s pretty apparent that he has read only secondary sources on Kant or at read only a little Kant & not in gopod conscience at that. For a n academic holding a named “fellowship,” this is disgraceful. The commenters on his AOL website are theists and atheists almost all as juvenile as he, so I don’t try to wade in there. But, Dinesh, if you’re reading this: you would, as you always have in my observation, flunk freshman philosophy. Clearly his grasp of the history of science is no better.
James Wolcott said everything that will ever need to be said about Dinesh D’Souza in a blog post last year. Check it out.
I haven’t read D’Souza’s column, and won’t, but does he mention Giordano Bruno?
According to the atheist narrative, the medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat until the brilliant scientists showed up in the modern era to prove that it was round. In reality, educated people in the Middle Ages knew that the earth was round. In fact, the ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. knew the earth was a globe. They didn’t need modern science to point out the obvious.
No, they needed modern science to provide the tasers to go along with streamlining their waterboarding tehcniques.
Who did the edumacated people in the middle ages need to arrest one of the most brilliant of their thinkers for teaching something that everyone knew? And this makes atheists and scientists look bad how?
That’s what I get for trying to make sense of anything coming from Distorts D’Truth. And I thought his rookie card was a double feature, with a picture of him staggering around with a drunk Laura Ingraham to all the gay bars on campus…
Atheism is a religion. Specifically, a form of Christianity based on denying the existence of the Christian God. (La Vey-style Satanism is similar, a mirror-reversal Christianity, and New Age thought is crypto-Christianity.) After all, if you can’t scientifically prove the non-existence of (a) God, then your belief there isn’t one is a matter of faith, right?
I’m a Taoist, myself.
What the fucking hell was the POINT of that stupid article?
That the upper hierarchy of the Catholic Church were pigheaded thugs foisting ignorance on the masses to serve nefarious ends and that they didn’t hesitate to use their vast power to persecute honest independent thinkers.
I think he might have been trying to draw an institutional parallel relevant to present-day America, but I don’t know. Can anybody see it?
Mole Miff:
I hold out that there is a possibility of god, though there has been no credible evidence presented thus far. It’s about as possible as Angelina Jolie having a crush on me…possible, but no evidence yet.
I have but one belief: I believe I’ll have a beer.
Actually Galileo didn’t do any such experiments; one of his students did.
Giambattista Fucking Benedetti dude. Who died when Galileo was 26. Even this guy’s ingorance is ignorant.
So, DD, does the fact that Hans Lippershay invented the first telescope mean that Galileo didn’t see the Jovian satellites? Oh yeah, Maxwell developed his equations using the luminiferous aether as a model, so your computer doesn’t work.
Man, Stephen Jay Gould talked about whiggish science; this is a whole other circle of stupid.
Ugh. Close A.
Out out, damn ‘a”
Boy, I’ve had an entirely crappy week typing-wise. Interestingly, I blame it on the lack of herb.
Is Doctorb Science trying to be another Bruce?
Cuz, dude, don’t even go there. There can be only one Bruce.
A couple other points. Galileo wasn’t convicted of heresy because he recanted, so that he could languish under house arrest rather than go to the stake. Hard to believe D’Souza doesn’t know this.
Also, D’Souza neglects to mention that Brahe made his observations without a telescope, and that he died almost a decade before Galileo made his relevant observations.
Last, Draper and White were not actually atheists. Details here.
There is a statue of Andrew Dickson White on the Arts Quad of Cornell University (motto: “Founded by Ezra Cornell”). If I’d known he was fated to send Dinesh D’Souza into paroxysms of blubbering nonsense, I would have treated him with more respect. Sorry I puked on your shoes on Green Dragon Day 1983, Professor White!
So Gor is pretty much just porn for dominants and submissives?
Doesn’t he realize the western world (Christians) didn’t even start using toilet paper until the 17th century, 1,000 years after its invention? And he’s saying medieval Christians, who didnt even wipe their asses or bathe were somehow enlightened, educated folks?
And by the way, the Greeks in the 5th century were not Christian!
“Atheism is a religion. Specifically, a form of Christianity based on denying the existence of the Christian God. ”
That’s about as dumb as D’Souza.
Atheism is simply a lack of belief in any gods at all.
So Gor is pretty much just porn for dominants and submissives?
Not porn as much as, uh, Edgar Rice Burroughs mixed with philosophy in the Ayn Rand sense of total bullshit. I was a naive schoolboy and I read ’em until the agenda became too obvious for a dumbass like me to miss, at which point I got creeped out.
The fact is, the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it.
You just have to use the reference frame of G(god)-space to see this.
Also, in G-space, you can see the true forms of the shapeshifting reptiles who rule us.
Suckle at the 87 teats of the shelizard Magdalene! Ai! Ai!
It’s about as possible as Angelina Jolie having a crush on me…possible, but no evidence yet.
Isn’t there an internet rule about providing an image link whenever you type Angelina Jolie?
He may indeed be dumbing it down for his audience of mouth-breathers.
No, he’s not. He really is this stupid. He routinely writes and speaks on subjects about which he knows almost nothing, and any time he’s in the presence of somebody who actually does know something about one of those subjects, he is nearly always intellectually depantsed.
In fact, now that I think of it, Dinesh D’Souza is the walking, talking epitome of the notion that a little knowledge is usually worse than no knowledge at all.
“In reality, educated people in the Middle Ages knew that the earth was round.”
Too bad most of them were Islamofascists from the Middle East.
Smut Clyde said,
Robert M. said,
James Watson is a racist jerk, but that doesn’t say anything about the structure and mechanisms of DNA
Fixed. Francis Crick was a blowhard, but I don’t remember any foot-in-mouth episodes involving racism.
And both were sexist pigs who allegedly used the idea of the C-G and A-T bonds across the DNA double helix strands developed by a female researcher in their studies without attribution. Her name escapes me at the moment….
Coulter spent 4 chapters in a book trying to disprove evolutionary science. FOUR PAINFUL FUCKING CHAPTERS. No, they DO NOT get it.
WHINING WINGNUT: “But evolution is just a THEEEEEEEEEEEEORY– therefore it CAN’T be true!”
Wingtards don’t get it because they have no concept of what, exactly, a scientific theory is.
Ruthie, that would be Rosalind Franklin, who sadly died of ovarian cancer before Watson, Crick, and her erstwhile colleague, Maurice Wilkins (who is the person who really should receive your ire, since he showed Watson and Crick Franklin’s work without her knowing about it) received the Nobel Prize for modelling the structure of DNA.
What he’s basically saying here is that it’s no big deal to be forced to publicly deny observable reality and suffer the resulting personal embarrassment, so long as you get to mingle with the ruling elite and be provided with elegant accommodations. I suspect this passage says more about Dinesh D’Souza than his subject matter.
Spot. On.
What does D’Nesh D’Souza think of Galileo’s mathematical creation of the idea of Uniform Acceleration?
Thinking minds must know.
It sounds like Dinny heard someone tell him about some actual history of science a few years back and is now dimly remembering what he was told. Yes, yes, there are some famous “just-so” stories about science history that obscure the complexities of how these things actually developed, but our young “scholar” is fuzzy on the details and writes like a reasonably competent 13-year-old.
What do you expect from the guy who basically invented “politically correct” in the ’80s? It’s still one of the most famous phrases in American English; the world still hasn’t got that hook out of its collective mouth. D’Souza caught lightning in a bottle 25 years ago and has been unsuccessfully trying to top that ever since. His latest efforts are just pathetic; they could be churned out by a bot (or outsourced to India).
It’s a typical wingnut “gotcha!” Attack a weak but minor (or even irrelevant) part of an opponents’ argument, get all sides to focus on it, then claim victory over the entire argument.
W’s TX Air National Guard “get-out-of-training-free” excuse purportedly signed by Gov. Ben Barnes in 1970 is in a Microsoft font not invented until 1986. Therefore, not only is the document fake but that means Bush served honorably in the TANG so STFU! I win!
Or…I found a creative interpretation of the Constitution that says my Schrute Bucks as legal a tender as that fiat currency / sign executive lettres de cachet! I win again again! In your face, libtards!
DuSooza’s statement needs a wrapper.
According to the wingnut narrative, the atheist narrative deems that medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat until the brilliant scientists showed up in the modern era to prove that it was round.
Ya know, crappy hack work is a bit more galling when it involves science. Besides all the straw man arguments, he’s not even internally consistent, as you capture nicely with the last sentence of the post.
dinesh is a living example of the joke “you’re so stupid you don’t know how stupid you are.”
and what about the firmament?!?!