4 minutes for Fox News to say "Fascist", a record?

I had a looksie at Professor Richard Dawkins being interviewed on the O'Reilly Factor, and to be fair to Bill, he was actually letting Richard occasionally speak this time, whereas on his last appearance he may as well have been tied to the chair with his mouth duct-taped shut. Maybe not being in the studio helped. Anyway, Richard had the wild idea that sticking "God did it" in science lessons anytime science hasn't found the answer yet, was maybe not a great idea. Here's the vid...



I thought I'd send Bill an email, he likes that kind of thing.

Hey Bill,

I watched your interview with Professor Richard Dawkins and am hugely disappointed that it took so little time for you to have to resort of the grubby tactic of a shouted accusation that he is a fascist. This for his simple proposition that science classes should only teach evidence based science. Such a reactionary and simplistic verbal assault is a pitiful level of discourse. Ad-hominem attack is no substitute for a reasonable cut & thrust of debate. Frankly, it's debate at the level of the village idiot, and the ugly outburst showed how swiftly you had run out of intellect, and sabotaged any of the prior points you had to make.

regards,
C.A. Hughes.

Although Bill has a lot of obnoxious views, if you look you can generally see there is a chain of thought that led to them. I wonder what he doesn't get about the idea that if you shove God in a gap in scientific knowledge, then there is no reason to explore that gap scientifically. The entire problem with the notion of "Creation Science" is that it is an anti-science; science seeks to answer questions by investigation, creation "science" tells you not to look, because the answer is ALWAYS "God did it", and that is ALWAYS supposed to be enough.

If it was enough, we'd still believe the Sun orbited the Earth, people wouldn't understand why the first anti-biotics didn't work anymore and go back to dying from simple infections, the mentally ill would still be treated with exorcisms. The list goes on. Whatever you believe, "God did it" is simply replacing one mystery with another, it precludes investigation rather than advancing it, it will never be a good enough answer in the quest to understand the world, the universe, or the workings of our own bodies.