Whoosh, and again I say… whoosh!

Logic from Hell rather conspicuously fails to grok:

Just what meaning of “science” is Vox Day talking about? There is no one meaning to this word “science,” especially when coming out of the mouth of a Christian libertarian who writes for World Net Daily. Science is knowledge gained by testing ideas against reality. Is Vox Day really against that? Or will the meaning of science shift through a half dozen shades of meaning and metaphors?

I use PZ Myers definition. Science as a three-in-one, body of knowledge, process and profession. Am I really against that? Against what? In one sentence, BFH says there is no one meaning, in the next, he says it is but a subset of the dynamic body of knowledge. And yet he accuses me of shifting meanings!

Is he talking about the anti-capitalist, anti-libertarian Soviet Union who beat us into space and started a space race that got us investing more government money in science and inspiring President Kennedy to announce the goal of landing a man on the Moon?

Yes, that Soviet Union, the scientific backwardness of which vis-a-vis the West is not seriously disputed by anyone of whom I am aware. Except, apparently, BFH. Their success in stealing German and US technology and making big rockets that didn’t quite blow up notwithstanding.

I thought Robert Noyce, who invented the silicon chip, was a physics major at Grinnell College as well as an electrical engineer. Isn’t physics science?

Yes, it is. But studying physics does not make one a physicist any more than studying China makes one Chinese. Am I an economist? I have a degree in it. I refer him to the “astrophysicist” once cited as proof of feminists in hard science, while she did indeed have a degree in astrophysics, she was teaching a Women’s Studies class about lesbians in Indian film. My father is an EE from MIT, I’ve never heard him or anyone else refer to him as a scientist.

Excuse me? Did the definition of science just shift? And what scientist is dictating human behavior? Where does that even come from? Is this behavior we’re dictating merely our objecting to having restraints on stem cell research or something? Are Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett forcing Vox Day to become an atheist?

No, it did not. It even fits BFH’s silly and suboptimal definition of science. What scientist is dictating human behavior? Oh, I don’t know, there seem to be a few who are rather forcefully telling people to stop doing things they believe are making the planet warmer, among other things. Of course, that “global warming” thing is pretty obscure, so perhaps BFH hasn’t heard of it before.

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are doing nothing but making it disreputable to be an atheist. Or perhaps I should say, even MORE disreputable. They have no idea what is going to hit them, and I’m not just referring to my own book here.

So, what exactly is the choice here? To move forward and learn what kind of universe we live in or to run away from scientific knowledge and live in stagnation until those societies that aren’t afraid of scientific truth decide we’ll make great cattle?

I wonder if he means those societies that are rather conspicuously failing to reproduce themselves? If BFH paid any attention to demographics, he’d know that the social groups most devoted to “scientific” values just happen to be the most, shall we say, evolutionarily challenged.

It’s tremendously amusing how this fan of Dawkins doesn’t recognize Dawkins own arguments in the column. But then, that’s par for the course, isn’t it.