Poor PZ! He tried. He “really, honestly tried!”

 Biology, Darwinism, entertainment, Humor
Oct 032007
 

The (in)famous PZ Myers, well-known ID critic and staunch Darwinist and philosophical naturalist, is at it again. He has written a “review” of The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary. PZ starts off in a huff:

I tried. I really, honestly, sincerely tried. I’ve been struggling with this book, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul, by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary, for the past week and a half, and I’ve finally decided it’s not worth the effort. It’s just about completely unreadable.

Poor fellow. It must have been a real effort for him to try to comprehend the book. It just wore him out. But, not finishing it doesn’t stop him from writing a review none-the-less. I’ve long suspected that many “reviews” of pro ID books or anti-Darwinism books were never actually read by the reviewers, but merely parroted the usual party lines about ID isn’t science or is creationism in “a cheap tuxedo” or whatever. At least in this instance, PZ admits up front that he hasn’t actually read the book…or at least not all of it. So, for all he knows, the problems he claims were in the book in the part he did read may have been addressed elsewhere in the book. Or, maybe he didn’t get the full context of what he’s sniffing about.

In any case, its entertaining at least. I only have one response to PZ. “I tried. I really, honestly, sincerely tried. I’ve been struggling with your “review” of Beauregard and O’Leary’s book for the past hour and a half, and I’ve finally decided its not worth the effort. Its just about completely unreadable. The writing is aggravating…it begins to wear on the reader…”

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teleologist
teleologist
13 years ago

Very funny!

This reminds me of his diatribe on Lewis via Collins.

Still up to this point there is nothing noteworthy from Myers that warrants a posting. Except in his tirade, Myers mocked at C. S. Lewis’s trilemma argument.
Myers: And dear gob, he was convinced by Mere Christianity? The “liar, lunatic, or lord” argument? Mere Christianity is a book that leaves atheists baffled at how anyone could find such drivel compelling –it’s a set of exceedingly weak excuses that believers find congruent with their preconceptions, but as a recruiting tool– man, it might sway a lunatic, and a liar might find it a useful tool, but lords need not apply.
While his visceral attack on the argument is poignant, it lacks the critical and objective thinking that he claims to cherish. What is it that is exceedingly weak about the trilemma? Is it just because Myers does not find it convincing due to his own blind predilection to Atheism? Or is it because he is just lazy and never studied the reasoning behind Lewis’s argument. If Myers does possess some knowledge or faculty for logic to his diatribe, it was never demonstrated. It would be wise to at least know your enemy, even if you disagree with him. Myers’s enemy, being Lewis, (ultimately God) was a former atheist then embraced eastern religion and finally turning to Christianity, Lewis was a master of mythology. Doesn’t it make sense for Myers to spend a bit of that critical thinking power that he claims to possess, to study the reasoning behind his enemy’s argument and demonstrate his counterargument in a slightly more concrete manner?

What did he find exceedingly weak about Lewis’s trilemma? Was it the historical manuscripts? Was it testimony and actions of the apostles? Or was it the entire Jewish and Roman historical record of the first century that he disputes? It seems to be that Lewis’s argument has substantially more evidential support than Myers’s Darwinian mythology. What sort of evidence does Myers have to support his atheistic myth? Look here is A, and here is B. A slowly turned into B but we just don’t have any detail historical evidence to show how and what was change for A to become B. This is really good critical thinking Myers. You are no doubt a legend in your own mind.

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