Hey hey hey!! How much does religion affect MIT?

molliebatmit
Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:07:11 +0000

Ben:

I think you DO know about (the DI) but don’t have enough respect for it. The fact that they are funded by an interest group to which you have objections does not entail that they are unskilled or that the arguments they make are always wrong.

I think their arguments are sometimes accidentally right. And I agree that they must be dealt with – my salary comes from the NIH, and I see all the reasons I need to keep the public and the government excited about what I do. I think the DI and the creationist propaganda machine needs to be taken seriously, but that doesn’t mean I respect them intellectually.



Ben:

While what constitutes the corpus of science is a sociologically determined thing, those determinations are not whimsical but hinge on standards.

It’s like pornography – I know it when I see it. ;)