Thanks Mr. Smith:
In Albuquerque, I'm Dr. John Konopak, and this is "For the Sake of Argument:
Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson appeared on Bill Moyers' PBS program last week, and as usual, was a rational, erudite advocate for science. This year he will appear in the 're-boot' of the most successful science show in history, Carl Sagan's "Cosmos."
Prof Tyson is a shining light of reason and rationality in a "discussion" which is mostly full of obscurantism, denial, fabulism, and really muddy thought.
(Actually, "arguing" with fundies about ANYTHING is almost exactly the equivalent activity to playing Scrabble with baboons: Pointless, fruitless, useless, and annoying, because they have no IDEA of what is going on.)
Of COURSE "creationism" doesn't "belong" in a science classroom. OBVIOUSLY!~
As Tyson says, they're in two different universes of discourse.
And equally obviously, though Tyson (strategically) refrains from saying so, baldly, the 'discourse of faith in the reputed sayings of imaginary beings and invisible friends" is equally incompatible with issues of law and justice. Neither Christians, nor Jews, Jains, or Jehova's Witnessed have "standing" to impose their 'spiritual' fantasies upon the secular 'body politic.'
Unfortunately, I fear, no one with the reputation, or credentials of a Professor Tyson who can claim the lectern in the social sphere the way Tyson does for the 'scientific' one.
Usurping the mantle of "the Bible," or "God's word" to impose sectarian superstitions on the Civis, the polis, is every bit as specious and spurious as doing so in the classrooms of a public school, but there seem to be no figures of Tyson's repute in the sciences to intervene in the broader arena, and expel the drooling, fabulist fantasists and their Holy claptrap from the positions of influence they increasingly, and destructively occupy in our public, policy debates. And it's a telling absence.--For the Sake of Argument, I'm Dr. John Konopak...Now back to Winstone Smith in the Studio...
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