An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins (What's Wrong with the World)

An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

by Francis Beckwith

This is pretty funny. (Warning: This has a little profanity in it).

Posted by Francis Beckwith on January 13, 2009 11:36 PM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Comments (28)

This has a little profanity in it

A disappointing understatement.

Posted by Todd | January 14, 2009 1:20 AM

The comment section attached to that video is good for a laugh at the expense of spluttering Dawkins-ites. On the other hand, it's depressing to see how little most people understand about science and religion, and the relationship between them. (Of course, being an open comment section on YouTube, there is the significant hazard of profanity).

Posted by Zach | January 14, 2009 1:55 AM

Thank you, Todd, for the additional warning. I won't watch it.

Posted by Lydia | January 14, 2009 8:42 AM

My thought on watching the first part of the video - I didn't make it through the whole thing, even though I think the substance of what the gentleman is saying has merit - was that it might be interesting to hook the two hot wires of a three-phase electrical supply to the electrodes he put on his ears, and the common wire to the electrode in his nose, just to see what happens. That must be what they are for.

Posted by Zippy | January 14, 2009 9:13 AM

I counted three or perhaps four vulgar words in the 4:45 min video.

Posted by Albert | January 14, 2009 11:01 AM

Severity and frequency are both valid criteria.

Posted by Todd | January 14, 2009 11:08 AM

Zippy: you owe me a new keyboard.

But, for once, I fear I must disagree with Prof. Beckwith...the video (which I managed to watch all the way through) was certainly *strange* - but funny? Hmmm...I guess I'm just too old, and too stuck in the mud.

*Sigh*

Posted by steve burton | January 14, 2009 3:32 PM

I found it vaguely discomfiting, and I'm younger than Prof. Beckwith. Perhaps I'm a young fogey or something. Perhaps I could not get past the aesthetic disjunction of a guy who looks like a professor but has sizable ear and nose piercings.

Posted by Maximos | January 14, 2009 3:41 PM

I just love looking at a guy who fidgets with the hair hanging in his eyes all the time. The word "chickified" comes to mind. We should digress into a discussion about Mark Driscoll now.

Posted by Gintas | January 14, 2009 4:19 PM

Steve:
I couldn't help myself. The urge to grab a pair of jumper cables was so strong it was making my hands itch.

Posted by Zippy | January 14, 2009 4:22 PM

Look folks, I can't publish a hit every time. Sometimes I offer a stinker. But, hey, it will make the good ones seem better! :-)

Posted by Francis Beckwith | January 14, 2009 7:28 PM

This noseringed fellow's shortcomings notwithstanding, I can't help but be in general sympathy with his complaint. He goes to show that not everyone outside of enlightened Christian thought is utterly enraptured by the likes of Dawkins' sophistries.

Posted by thebyronicman | January 14, 2009 7:44 PM

Mark Driscoll and his wife babysat my eldest when she was an infant. But that was before he was "Mark Driscoll" and had stories about him in the New York Times. He was an undergraduate. Funny, I can never remember hearing him swear even once back then. Maybe it grew on him.

Posted by Lydia | January 14, 2009 8:14 PM

Lydia:

I'm starting to get the impression that you and Tim are the Edith and Francis Schaeffer of professional philosophy. Kalamazoo is the new L'Abri, and your next book is, "How Should We then Freeze?" (It's freekin' -4 here. What's next, irrational numbers?)

As for the nose rings, I'm with Zippy. Here's what I think: you can't pick your family, but you can pick your nose rings.

Frank

Posted by Francis Beckwith | January 14, 2009 11:12 PM

He goes to show that not everyone outside of enlightened Christian thought is utterly enraptured by the likes of Dawkins' sophistries.

I'd bet you a beer that critical theory people hold Dawkins in even greater disdain than you do.

Posted by Mike | January 15, 2009 8:21 AM

Actually, Frank, we knew Mark Driscoll 'way out west in Washington before coming to Michigan.

The cold getting to ya'? And you're a little further south than we are. Yahoo says it's -4 here, too, but my thermometer says we've made it up to _positive_ 4.

Posted by Lydia | January 15, 2009 9:28 AM

I'd bet you a beer that critical theory people hold Dawkins in even greater disdain than you do.

Not an area of thought I know too much about, beyond a few highlights. Would you mind expanding a bit?

Posted by thebyronicman | January 15, 2009 12:18 PM

Byronic: You didn't ask me, and I'm not an expert either; but in a nutshell, the postmoderns hate the positivists, and vice versa, even though they are cut from precisely the same cloth. (The new atheists are the positivists in this drama).

Posted by Zippy | January 15, 2009 12:30 PM

Zippy,

Right, right. Everything is a "critical lens" and the pomo's are interested in getting behind core assumptions, revealing paradigms of thought, etc., all something of a quasi-Kantian project? Darwinistic science, in this sense, is just another paradigm, a set of assumptions that can be criticized and deconstructed like anything else...to know the history and inner workings of an idea is to free oneself from the idea...am I anywhere in the ballpark?

Posted by thebyronicman | January 15, 2009 12:38 PM

...am I anywhere in the ballpark?

There you go. I mean, you could go spend years studying it and all, just like you could go spend years studying different kinds of excrement. But in the end it is just a pile of s***. Better to spend time on jazz piano and kisses for the missus.

Posted by Zippy | January 15, 2009 12:41 PM

Better to spend time on jazz piano and kisses for the missus.

Ha, indeed. Interestingly, Swift is actually making an aural wordplay on that track. He's really saying, "Kisses For The Misses," as in those great songs a songwriter crafts that should have been big hits, but weren't. It's a woe-is-me-poor-misunderstood-and-underpaid/under-appreciated-genius thing, one of his specialties.

Posted by thebyronicman | January 15, 2009 1:07 PM

Ahh, that's great! I love good wordplay in a song; e.g. I get a kick out of the song/video "Misery" by Soul Asylum just for the self-referential irony.

Posted by Zippy | January 15, 2009 1:27 PM

I get a kick out of the song/video "Misery" by Soul Asylum just for the self-referential irony.

Did I just read that right?

Zippy & Soul Asylum?

Somehow, I mistook "Zippy" to be some old prude who was strictly a connoisseur of finer music! *wink*

Posted by aristocles | January 15, 2009 1:34 PM

"Somehow, I mistook 'Zippy' to be some old prude who was strictly a connoisseur of finer music! *wink*"

No, aristocles. That would be me.

"The cold getting to ya'? And you're a little further south than we are. Yahoo says it's -4 here, too, but my thermometer says we've made it up to _positive_ 4."

So where is global warming when we need it? My favorite quail d'Anvers rooster died on my lap, this morning - a tiny victim of last night's cold here in Missouri.

Poor creature.

Posted by steve burton | January 15, 2009 4:18 PM

I will concede: there are some atheists who behave this way, and it embarrasses me that they're on my "side." But wow: I cannot imagine anyone disliking Dawkins enough to line up with *this* guy.

Posted by Andrew T. | January 15, 2009 5:09 PM

Steve,

"Somehow, I mistook 'Zippy' to be some old prude who was strictly a connoisseur of finer music! *wink*"
No, aristocles. That would be me.

You might happen to be a great many things, Steve, but an 'old prude' you certainly are not! ;^)

Posted by aristocles | January 15, 2009 5:23 PM

I get a kick out of the song/video "Misery" by Soul Asylum just for the self-referential irony.

Hmph. I get a kick out of the song "String of Pearls" by Soul Asylum just for the self-referential narrative time loop.

Posted by Step2 | January 15, 2009 5:40 PM

Don’t worry, Frank. I found the video funny (I confess this says more about me than the video). As a critic of religion, Dawkins is clearly a pamphleteer and second-rate philosophe. A bawdy, half-serious retort seems to be the sort of reply Dawkins deserves.

Posted by M. Eponges de bain | January 21, 2009 12:36 PM

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An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

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