Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Before we get into details, I think I better first introduce you to the claimant. This comes from a chap called David Klinghoffer. He works for the Discovery Institute as a … well, that does not really matter, because knowing that it is the Discovery Institute tells you all you really need to know; its basically kook central for the Intelligent Design movement.
Since it is indeed “them” you know in your heart of hearts this is going to be truly silly (it is), so here we go. He starts out with …
First, a bit of context for folks who don’t know. Dennis Markuze of Montreal is a fully certified 100% solid gold kook who, using an assortment of pseudonyms when online (including David Mabus and Hebert Marxuxe) has been issuing a torrent of threating emails and tweets to many skeptic bloggers. When I say “torrent”, I’m not being poetical, its a factual description. To give you a feel for what its like, PZ wrote the other day …
Every morning when I get up and get on the computer, the first thing I do is delete the pile of spam from Dennis Markuze, each of which is usually cross-posted to 50 to 100 other people. Every time I fire up Twitter, the first thing I do is clear the garbage Dennis Markuze has left there; yesterday I blocked and reported spam from over 25 Markuze accounts, amounting to several hundred messages.
Exactly, the old “I’m a doctor just trust me” line simply does not cut it when it comes to claims like this. So what do you need? How about some actual “Evidence”.
You would think folks would understand the word “Atheist”, but to my complete astonishment some sections of the media don’t. Jesse Bogan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports … “Halfmann, essentially an atheist,” writes Brogan, ”testified that he needed the book [the Satanic Bible] to practice his religion, which, he said, primarily meant following the … Read more
“Interestingly, when I applied to Cornell, my application dripped of my passion for the study and research of the Universe. Somehow the admissions office brought my application to the attention of the late Dr. Sagan, and he actually took the initiative and care to contact me. He was very inspirational and a most powerful influence. Dr. Sagan was as great as the universe, an effective mentor.”
