welch wrote:Dave wrote:Zenspace wrote:
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I'm hardly an expert in that sort of thing (I usually head in the other direction), but it seems to me he's fucked that goal well and good already. The only leadership position Peezus is headed for is the lunatic fringe of the sjw's.
True, but hes not smart enough to realize it.
The larger issue is he has the wrong goal.
Dawkins, Harris, Shermer, Hitchens et al didn't set out to become big kahunas. They set out to support a number of goals:
- Advance secularism in society, so as to reduce religion's influence.
- Advance things like rational thinking, skepticism (as a
process)
- Advance science both in what it's capable of and its popularity because it's the best way we have to fix a fuckton of problems and know How Things Work
They, and others, have different backgrounds, political views, etc., but they all set out to further a set of goals. They also happened to be dedicated, talented and worked really fucking hard at it. A side effect of this was them becoming thought of as leaders in the atheist and other related movements.
PeeZus doesn't get that. He wants to go from professor at obscure university to Dawkins, but he ignores the real, hard, valuable work Dawkins did that elevated him to being "The Dawkins". I mean, for fuck's sake, Dawkins has, on average, published a book almost every three years since 1976 on evolution and/or atheism. In terms of Academic Papers, he's written, or been involved in something like 43 since between 1968 and 2004. That's almost one per year.
Dawkins has also written a number of articles for all kinds of publications that advance things like science and science education outside of academia. His books are about science and atheism, but targeted at the non-academic community.
What has PeeZus done other than be a second-rate speaker at conferences? Well, for once, we can see
http://www.morris.umn.edu/directories/p ... Myers.html
He has ALMOST written one book, and around 28 Academic publications, conference papers and presentations, between 1986 and 2002. First, I'm glad he finally has some details up, because it shows that at least up until 2002 or so, he was you know, being a scientist, not just an asshole. Secondly, in that time period, that is to me, a decent publication record, about two papers a year.
So it's not like PeeZus hasn't actually contributed to science in multiple ways. The problem is, that when you look at what he's done outside of science, and being a jerk on a blog, that's where he falls down. He's *almost* written a book that is going to be...well, his fucking blog. The non-science bits.
He wants to be at Dawkins' level, but that's the goal...to be a name. Dawkins wrote how many books explaining why science and evolution are so important to well, everything. PeeZus's writing, maybe one day, a book on how stupid religious people are.
That's how you become a gadfly, not a leader.