March 2, 2016 7:05 AM

If you're going to write for Breitbart, you can't credibly call anyone "dumb"

Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson, Holy Wars

Neil deGrasse Tyson made the decision a long time ago to be a sort of media cheerleader for science instead of an actual scientist, and although he isn’t a great communicator, it was the right decision because he was unlikely ever to trouble the Nobel committee. Also, he is stupid and his politics are dumb.

Sam Harris once said, “Pretending to know things that you do not know is the lifeblood of religion.” To some who consider themselves religious, that may seem arrogant or offensive…but it’s not something they can disprove.

If someone told you that drinking a fifth of Wild Turkey while standing on your head during a snowstorm will absolutely cure your headache, you’d no doubt want to know what evidence their “cure” is based on. Yet when someone says that an unseen, all-knowing force controls the Universe and expect you to pledge absolute, unquestioning obedience to it…oh, and you’ll also be under surveillance 24/7/365 so this unseen force may verify that you’re following its rules.

You can also expect that if you decline to follow this unseen force you will be pilloried by its followers and accused of all manner of trespasses, immorality, and/or other crimes against the force.

As silly as this may sound, it’s the essence of the science-vs.-religion argument:

  • Science, which accepts only which can be proven, lives in the realm of what can be seen, experienced, and empirically demonstrated to be factual and correct.
  • Religion, the belief in a Supreme Being or other unseen force, is based on faith and the acceptance of what by its very nature is neither visible nor provable.

Here’s a pro tip if you’re going to engage in criticizing a scientist with a Ph.D. in Astrophysics: Starting by discussing “Scientists Who Are Actually Really Stupid” can only result in revealing just how truly, deeply, and intensely stupid YOU are.

Neil deGrasse Tyson made the decision a long time ago to be a sort of media cheerleader for science instead of an actual scientist, and although he isn’t a great communicator, it was the right decision because he was unlikely ever to trouble the Nobel committee. Also, he is stupid and his politics are dumb.

Tyson, whom liberals love because they are racists who can’t believe a black guy could be smart enough to be a scientist and so spontaneously ejaculate and soil themselves every time they see him on TV, hasn’t published anything of note for years. The advantage of being a celebrity scientist is that you don’t actually have to do any science. You’re exempted from the usual “publish or perish” rules.

OK, so Milos Yiannopoulos, the author of this incredibly facile screed, plies his trade at Breitbart.com (Full disclosure: A few months before Andrew Breitbart’s death, I found myself in a minor and amusing Twitter contretemps with him- something about Liberal intellectual elites, which he meant as an insult but I took as a compliment.). No credible journalist worthy of the name would sully their reputation or torpedo their credibility by accepting a byline at Breitbart. Worrying about reputation or credibility doesn’t seem to be an issue for Milos Yiannopoulos, the hapless author this hit piece, slathered as it is in smug arrogance and the conviction that he’s smarter than a scientist with a Ph.D.

Right….

Observers are left to conclude that Tyson is an attention-seeking media troll who courts adoration from bloggers, students and hipsters while picking off low-hanging fruit and mocking people he doesn’t like. But he often does this not with the master troll’s scalpel but the clumsy tin ear of the lumbering buffoon who pisses people off for all the wrong reasons, with cheap, sarcastic bait masquerading as sassy intellect.

So, instead of detailing (with evidence and examples, f’rinstance) the myriad ways in which Tyson is “wrong,” Milos Yiannopoulos regales us with cheap personal insults which, in his mind, at least, position him as an authority and credible critic. He’s a petulant child too lazy to actually do his homework, but it’s Breitbart…so why should anyone feign surprise at shoddy journalism, poor writing, and an excess of cheap, personal insults camouflaged as legitimate criticism?

Tyson has a complex relationship with the Almighty. He loves to bait Christians, despite claiming — at least some of the time — to be an agnostic. Incredibly, he believes that Christians have no right to call Scientology crazy. His silly, provocative comparisons between Christianity and Scientology are becoming a regular thing.

Actually, Christians really have no argument for calling Scientology crazy. Both believe in things that can’t be seen or proven. Both demand unquestioned obedience. Both believe it’s impossible to live a moral life without a Supreme Being surveilling you 24/7/365. The difference is that Scientology is a monstrous, exploitative, and litigious belief system that protects its interests with a ferocity on par with Donald Trump.

There’s nothing concrete that could be held up as making Christianity as a belief system inherently superior to Scientology. With nothing empirical about either religion, any argument is doomed to have a “I know I am, but what are you??” quality to it.

As dumb as Tyson is, his fans are even more preposterously thick, which is probably to be expected given that they’re all liberals. But the extent to which they hoover up and retweet his contradictory and brainless provocations is matched only by the hilarity of the occasional social justice car crash, in which the politics of grievance that Tyson likes to encourage comes back to bite him.

Again, I’d suggest refraining from referring to someone with a Ph.D. behind their name as “dumb” unless you have an actual, supportable argument to make. Beyond that, supporting your case with cheap personal insults, while part and parcel of Breitbart’s brand of “journalism,” isn’t de facto proof of your moral/intellectual superiority. It just makes you look, in the words of a close friend, like an “ass clown.”

The problem here is that Yiannopoulos can’t be bothered to make a cogent, supportable argument for why Neil DeGrasse Tyson is “dumb.” Then again, he doesn’t need to, because Breitbart’s lingua franca is cheap shots and character assassination.

What Yiannopoulos doesn’t realize is that there’s no argument to be made that religion is superior to politics. When you can show me what Bible verse cured polio, what prayer took Man to the Moon, or what hymn invented the combustion engine, then perhaps we can talk. Until then, no matter how hard you try, faith (the belief in something that can’t be seen or proven) can never hope to trump science (the belief in what is observable and provable). Nor will smug arrogance ever be held to be superior to facts and empirical truth.

One suggestion for Yiannopoulos: If you’re going to write for Breitbart, you might want to tread lightly before calling someone else “dumb.”

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on March 2, 2016 7:05 AM.

No country for stoopid sheeple was the previous entry in this blog.

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