"You did WHAT to my book?"
So there’s this evangelist called Ray Comfort who has hooked up with TV’s Kirk Cameron to become an unstoppable force for stupid. If you haven’t seen it yet, here is a YouTube video explaining their intent to…oh, just watch it, I really can’t do justice to the message. But notice that the implication is their copy of Origin of Species will be the exact same one sold in the college bookstore, just with this wacky introduction appended.
Eugenie Scott, a celebrated voice of scientific reason, wrote a response to this version of the book in which she reveals that this was a big fat lie. Chapters are missing, as is Darwin’s own introduction. The part I especially enjoy about this is Cameron’s statement in the video that “All we want to do is present the opposing and correct view, rather than being censored.” If you have to sell your stuff using lies and hypocrisy, maybe it’s not such good stuff.
I read Dr. Scott’s article the day before I saw this tweet from Daniel Loxton, editor of Junior Skeptic:
I remind all skeptics, atheists, scientists: Ray Comfort’s Origin of Species project is a *publicity stunt.* Our outrage is his best ally.
Then I read Comfort’s own statement. You should too.
I agreed with Daniel’s comment initially, but I have to admit it left my mind for a while as I read Comfort’s ridiculous piece. How can he make a statement like “I want them to thoroughly read On the Origin of Species” when he has gone about censoring the damn thing? What the — frakking — just — grrr.
But then I got to the parting shot, which goes like this:
In Darwin’s book, nothing is as God created it. Instead, all of creation miraculously evolved—from the bear’s mouth to the giraffe’s tail. For some reason, it has all reached the point of maturity during our lifetime and (after millions of years of redundancy) now functions as it was intended. Move over, J. R. R. Tolkien, Arthur C. Clarke, and J. K. Rowling. These three combined don’t hold a candle to Charles Darwin. Most of their fans know that their writings were fantasy. Darwin’s faithful followers don’t.
Yes, Ray Comfort just compared Darwin…to Tolkien. He starts his piece wondering “Why are many atheists so angry?” and ends it with the most inane of “inflammatory” comments. And suddenly Daniel’s words shot back to mind as it became perfectly clear that this is not an argument; this is a troll who wants nothing more than for atheists to get angry. And everyone knows you don’t feed the trolls.
Obviously this silliness isn’t going to have the far-flung effect on future generations of “doctors, lawyers, and politicians” that Cameron gets himself all in a lather about. So although to a rational thinker this is frustrating and even infuriating, the best thing we can do instead of frothing on cue is to ignore it. If you want to spend your energy countering celebrity idiocy, there’s always Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccination campaign of terror, which actually is a matter of life and death. Comfort’s dangling some easy, easy bait, and I can only imagine his dismay and disappointment if people just stopped taking it, or talking about him at all.
So how was everyone’s Halloween?
