MM poses an understandable question:
So why has this annoying twat not been banned yet?
Are you kidding? Cosmos is a more effective argument against atheism and its claims to rational and intellectual superiority than anything I can possibly construct on my own. That’s why there’s more than a few people – some of them atheists – who believe he’s a strawman I’ve concocted. Now, if I could only find equally reliable and enthusiastic feminists, socialists and Three Monkey Republicans, I’d be delighted.
That being said, I find it tremendously amusing when people claim that I’m cherry-picking the lame arguments, then when offered the opportunity to provide better ones, end up repeating the very arguments that they previously described as lame. If Dr. PZ Myers or Brent Rasmussen or Jim Downey or Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, or Christopher Hitchens or Michael Onfray or any other atheist wishes to engage in a public debate with me, I’m always happy to engage in a forthright, civilized manner, with or without a moderator. I have no doubt that some of these individuals are capable of doing significantly better than Cosmos, but the basic form of their arguments will, in most cases, be essentially the same.
Speaking of which, I think I may owe Daniel Dennett an apology. After finishing two more of his books, I suspect I have unfairly caricatured him on the basis of his public interviews. I have to think more on the matter, but if I deem it necessary, I shall do so without hiding it in the small print.
Ah well. One can’t make a habit out of soaring on the heights of rhetoric without the occasional bumpy landing.