On Fri, 9 May 2008 18:16:25 -0700 (PDT), LMC Society hotmail.com>
wrote:

As someone once put it in a blog post:

THAT FOOL DAWKINS

Rational debate about the existence/ non-existence of God, and the ethical
implications thereof, is good. It belongs to human dignity to seek to discern
what is true.

There is an academic discipline which studies questions such as what
constitutes a warranted belief, what religious language 'means', whether it
has a possible reference and what it means for our conceptions of the good
life. That discipline is philosophy. There is also an academic discipline
whose remit of study includes the atrocities committed in the name of
religion. That discipline is history.

So why, when Channel Four want to air a programme about these issues do they
give air-time to a biologist with no training whatsoever in either discipline?
Moreover one whose previous pronouncements in this area have only been
published because he has piggy-backed on his (justified) scientific reputation
and which, considered in their own right, are unworthy of a moderately bright
A-level student..

Yet another example of the ignoring of the humanities in mainstream culture
and, in spite of the irrationalism of our age, the persistence of the
Victorian cult of the polymath scientist. Boo, hiss.