If you’re at the University of Alberta this evening…
…this might be something you’ll want to check out. Myself, I plan to spend this evening packing boxes and moving them from the apartment to the new place, but that’s just me. Personally, I don’t want to legitimize either participant in the debate, and I also happen to think that the debate subject is…well…stupid.
But at any rate, here’s what Denis O. Lamoureux forwarded to me. The event is tonight, at the University of Alberta.
Event Info
Host:
Time and Place
Date: Monday, January 26, 2009
Time: 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Location: ETLC E1-001 University of AlbertaDescription
The University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics, and Campus for Christ are cohosting a debate on the existence of God. Arguing that a God does exist is Kirk Durston, national director of the New Scholars Society and PhD. candidate at the University of Guelph, and arguing the other side is Dr Paul Zachary Myers, biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, as well as famed author of the blog, Pharyngula.
The cost for students is $2, non-students, $5. CFI Friends of the Center are free. All profits will be donated to a local charity.
The debate will last approximately 2 hours, with the second hour being audience questions.
Afterward will be a Pharyngufest, most likely at RATT. All are welcome!
Please check back, as further details may be added.
There’s a number of remarks I can make about this.
1) The selection of Kirk Durston is unfortunate, given that the man is a proponent of Intelligent Design (ID). His background, evidently, is in computer science, and while I don’t know if this is still his active project, he was at least for a time working on analyzing gene sequences with a computer model of his own devising, in an effort to demonstrate that it was wildly improbable that a protein could have randomly adapted a particular three-dimensional fold.
Evidently, he has used the above in the past as “proof” of the existence of God. Which, I confess, I find to be rather irksome; there seems to be this subcurrent of crypto-positivism that infests the ID and Young Earth Creationsm movements and inspires them to try and find empirical proof of God’s existence. In Durston’s case, this is done through what essentially reduces to a “God of the Gaps” approach.
Which probably means that PZ Myers is going to be the overall victor in tonight’s debate.
2) You know, I can understand why Campus for Christ selected Durston: he’s a member of the New Scholar’s Society, which is apparently a Campus for Christ initiative, or somehow affiliated with them at any rate.
But at the same time, Denis Lamoureux lives in their own back yard, and gives talks on the science and Religion issue every semester. He’s at least ten times the scientist that Myers will ever be, and an excellent debater. He’d mop the floor with Myers, and then use him to sop up spilled drinks at the bar later that evening. Why Campus for Christ never has Denis come out to these things mystifies me…although I suppose it could have something to do with this.
3) What’s somewhat harder to understand is the selection of Myers, although I suppose this sort of thing is right up his alley. Still, it’s hard to understand why people afford him too much legitimacy these days, after his antics during the summer of 2008.
And yes, I’m talking about the Eucharistic desecration.
And yes, I am suggesting that I don’t understand why even the atheists and agnostics club here thinks he has much left in terms of legitimacy or credibility, in the wake of that event.
Obviously, for a Catholic, the desecration was highly offensive…and yet, it struck me that I’ve almost (not quite, but almost) seen better desecrations on the back of a milk carton. For what, ultimately, did Myers do to the Eucharistic host he was able to obtain? Well, he drove a nail through it (yeah, dude, real original of you…), dumped it in the trash with a page from Richard Dawkins‘ The God Delusion (and possibly a page from the Koran?), and then put a spent banana peel and some old coffee grounds on top of the lot.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but he would have committed a grosser desecration — and been substantially more offensive — had he just recorded a video of himself eating the host.
Don’t get me wrong: what he did was plenty offensive, and did count as desecration. But it was also very tone deaf, and ultimately pulled its big punch when he tried to turn it into a “question everything” message (and so opted to include Dawkins and the Koran in the trash bin).
And I think that goes to why atheists and agnostics should be annoyed at Myers, as well, and why I am puzzled at the selection of him for this debate. Here is a man who spends all spring talking tough about his grand plans for the desecration of the “frackin’* cracker” that is the Eucharistic host…only to turn in a C-grade performance that aims for inclusivity, under the banner of “question everything,” rather than a well-thought-out blasphemy specifically targeted at Catholics and designed for maximum theological offence.
Kind of a let-down, no? Although admittedly, I did admire Vox Day’s somewhat snarky take on the whole affair. So some good came of the mess, at any rate.
(* note that in true Battlestar terminology, Myers’ inclusion of a ‘c’ in ‘frak’ is incorrect. Your Battlestar-fu is weak, old man…)
4) Even though Myers will probably “win” the debate because his opponent appears to be so staggeringly inept, it should be noted that Myers himself is on worse logical footing. This goes to the overall stupidity of the debate topic — “Does God Exist?” — but anyhow, Myers’ comes in with the disadvantage of having to prove, by argument, a negative.
5) It should be noted that the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics tried, recently, to remove mention of God from the convocation ceremony. I don’t actually know if that move succeeded or not — if so, I’m glad I finished school a couple years ago! — but regardless of whether they succeeded or not, the appeal to “everyone being welcome” in the message above is blatant hypocrisy, given that only recently, Ian Bushfield was arguing in the campus newspaper that a minority opinion — the 36% (apparently) of college-age Canadians who don’t profess belief in God — justified the removal of the mention of God from the convocation ceremony.
Of course, in looking up some more information about Mr. Bushfield, I can’t help but think that there isn’t a subcurrent of social autism behind this whole thing. After coming under fire for the suggestion of removing God from convocation, it only makes sense for a social autist to propose something like a debate on the existence of God.
And actually, in looking at Mr. Bushfield’s online persona, I have to say: he certainly seems to fit the profile of the socially autistic Pharyngulan that Vox Day noted a while back:
An Australian study into the sexual history of 185 students at the University of Sydney found male science “nerds” were the least likely to have had sexual intercourse.If you want to banish an annoying Pharyngulan, it’s not actually the sign of the Cross over the chest that’s the most effective. It’s the sign of the L on the forehead. You know it kills them that every evangelical church and lunatic pagan astrology cult is filled with pretty young women who would be nauseated at the thought of a too-close encounter with their soft, pasty-white scientist bodies even if those bodies weren’t accompanied by the ubiquitous social autism of the self-described rationalist.
Perhaps one of these days Pharyngulans will wake up to the fact that the reason their ever-so-important scientific endeavors are so poorly rewarded is because they don’t hold any substantive material value for anyone. The fact that a large pack of avowed materialists can’t figure this out between them should suffice to demonstrate the plastic popguns that pass for intellectual firepower there.
At least they’ll always have their science degrees. I suppose there’s some consolation in that.
So anyhow…if you happen to be on the U of A campus tonight, good reader, do go and check this debate out. Or don’t; I actually don’t expect it’ll be all that entertaining, but will rather consist of two idiots each attempting to be slightly less idiotic than the other guy.
Myself…I’m going to keep moving boxes from the apartment to the new house, an endeavour I think will be substantially more worthwhile and rewarding. And maybe, if I find a moment, I’ll pray for an asteroid. Just a little one, you understand; just enough to take out the large lecture hall that is ETLC E1-001.
