A Day with Ed Brayton

aka Some Days Are Just More Fun Than Others

I have this unfortunate propensity to jump into conversations with challenges.  Sometimes it works; sometimes not.  Today was a so-so day.  I went over to Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars and attempted to correct some errors.  Probably not a wise move.  What intrigued me was that TIU, parent of my current seminary TEDS, is running ads on freethoughtblogs.com.  Seems counterproductive to me.  But alas.

Now Ed is an interesting character.  He is pretty good at analysis and can spot an inconsistency with ease.  But an historian he is not.  From his post it is clear that he has bought into the simplistic rhetoric that "religious right" == "dominion" and that the whole things is some grand scheme to overthrow the free world.  Ok so far?

Now Ed has every right to his own opinion.  It's a free country.  Has been whether the president has been Reagan, Clinton, Bush (W), or Obama.  Nobody is rounding up dissenters.  (Well, there was that one unfortunate incident involving a tank against non-combatants.)  What is interesting is the opinions that he encourages.  My challenge to the reign of Rationalism garnered tis characteristic response:

“Something other than Rationalist values?”
“Other traditional matters?”
You can cloak it in whatever flowery language you want, but here is the reality of actual policy positions such people have actually been advocating:
-A nationwide ban on gay marriage, which helps nobody but actively hurts actual real-life gay people.
-Re-criminalizing homosexuality, in other words putting actual real-life people in jail for being gay.
-Official establishment of Christianity in public schools, in the form of mandatory prayer, sectarian bible study, and the censorship of science education according to religious dictates.
-A radical rescinsion of women’s reproductive rights, including not only abortion but contraception as well. In case you didn’t know, that translates directly into massive child poverty and women (actual real-life women) dying in back-alley abortions.
You can call it a defense of tradition if you want, but that’s the same rationale offered by the Klu Klux Klan. Strip away the spin and what you find is a wholesale assault on fundamental human rights.

Apparently any defense against rationalism means a whole bunch of insidious things.  Apparently this makes me a racist, a murderer, completely unscientific, and a theonomist.  Amazing.  Truly.

But hey.  This stuff is generally harmless.  Isn't it? 

This past year or so I decided to stay away from Crooks and Liars.  To much uneducated rabble.  No real intellectual interaction.  I thought some challenge here might bring out a little substance.

Why would I think that?  Well, about 3 years ago Ed banned me from his original Dispatches blog over at Science Blogs.  Why?  Because I referred to PunkEek as a type of saltationism.  He thought that was too uninformed to deserve dialogue.  (I took that banning as a call to study evolution as thoroughly as possible.  It has been a fruitful experience.)  Interestingly, I think Daniel Dennett has said the same thing, though some have called him to task for it as well.  Still, it's not a completely uninformed opinion.

In short, that's the fun I had today.