More science, please

I would like to make a effort to improve this blog's science reporting. Naturally a good place to start would be to head over to this year's "science blog of the year."

On the front page of the "science blog of the year," we have, at the time of this writing, the following posts:

1. The creationist billboards of Minnesota make the news again
   
2. The creationists will breathe a little easier
   
3. Bad Santas
   
4. A Christmas blogswarm
   
5. Christmas morning
   
6. A merry god-free Christmas to you all!
   
7. Good-timing (the carnival of the godless)
   
8. Objectively anti-Christmas
   
9. The courtier's reply

So much hardcore science—so little time!

Let's just look at the most recent post, about creationist billboards. The post's scientific thrust is the alarming news that creationists are purchasing billboard space in Minnesota. (What gives them the right?) And its deductive conclusion is that certain commercial enterprises should be boycotted. I love it. This is just the kind of awe-inspiring writing you expect to find on the "science blog of the year!"

But wait, there's more. No science post should be just about science. We should also examine the comments, to see what the insightful fans of the "science blog of the year" have to say. Surely this will be the equivalent of, say, the letters to the editor in Physics Today.

Well we start of with a brazen comment from Astronomy professor Rob Knop, who wrote:

Make no mistake, there is assuredly a cultural conflict going on here. However, except for you and for the creationists, this is not a conflict between "science" and "religion." This is a conflict between "science" and "antiscience."

Unspeakable, blasphemous appeasement! You call that an appropriate sentiment for the "science blog of the year?"

Not to worry, the scientists who frequent the "science blog of the year" will set this apostate straight.

Steve_C writes:

Atheists and scientists are not buying billboard space saying "don't believe in god, it's antiscience".

How true—they aren't. Instead some atheists (who do little, if any science anymore) are publishing popular books (of which you are not permitted to write a bad review—unless you too are to be charged with appeasement) and petitioning to make teaching one's religion to one's children a crime.

Then the science blogger of the year himself makes a scientific statement of the kind that, truly, only he can make. Commenting on Rob Knop:

Oy, another apologist speaks up.

I do not target religion because it includes an odious group. I target it because it is all nonsense. This game of "well, that subset is stupid, but really, my religion doesn't deserve to be rejected" is annoying -- it's pretending that your favorite myths ought to be accepted by default, and no, they don't deserve that much respect.

JamesR, who no doubt operates the "rhetoric blog of the year," adds:

Rob, by allowing them to lie about this proven factual science you too have to accept that they are lying in your name. And when you fail to speak up you become another of those that we lump into the stupid dishonest liars who have been ruining our country for far too long.

Well said!

Of course, there's more. But science this good can get diluted the more it is rewritten and paraphrased, so you may want to track the post for further scientific developments.

The apostate Rob Knop has not responded yet. Sometimes those silly appeasers, when properly scolded by the scientific elite, slink back to their labs and offices and do research, the heathens! They simply do not understand what science is! Not like PZ Myers or, say, Jonathan Wells! They understand that real science is talking about the evils of religion and real theology is talking about the evils of science. Actually doing research—yechh—that's for little people.