Rationality Could Use
A Good Publicist
James Beacham
From:
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: PAM subscriptions
Date: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 9:49 AM
I appreciate you doing your best to fit me in [to receive sample copies of the print edition].
I was also thinking about your response to the "Apples and Oranges" guy on the website, and how rationality and skepticism could use a good publicist. I see both Bill Nye (the Science Guy) and Stephen Jay Gould as excellent public faces for the cause of clear-headed science. Nye has done at least one of his television shows on the subject of pseudo-science (explaining it to kids as "science" niether provable nor disprovable, e.g. creationism), and I'm always surprised at how many people in any given group have actually heard of and are familiar with Gould's work.
Both of them gave excellent talks at this year's Skeptics 2000 conference at CalTech, which was in honor of Gould and his career. Nye described state lottos as "taxes on the ignorant" and decried the lack of critical thinking skills in society. Gould (among other things) reminded us that "our creationist friends know exactly what they are doing" when they attempt to discredit evolutionary theory through sophistry.
And both of them are doing their damnedest to engender intelligence in people.
Incidentally, did you ever get that copy of MARJOE that I sent? I've had some strange troubles getting things where I want them to go with the USPS lately, so let me know if it even arrived.
James Beacham
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To:
Subject: Re: PAM subscriptions
Date: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 10:55 AM
Yeah, I was not familiar with Nye, and Gould simply slipped my mind in favor of Dawkins, who is more of a hard-liner, I think, than Gould.
I put an abridged version of the Apples and Oranges piece in the November, 2000 print edition, and corrected several typos in the web posting.
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
Five years of service to
people with no reason to believe
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