Long-time Bay of Fundie readers are familiar with crackpot creatard Kevin Wirth, his crackpot creatard buddy Jerry Bergman, and Kevin’s endless shilling of Bergman’s book Slaughter of the Dissidents. As bad as books such as The Secret and Going Rogue are, at least they’re from reputable publishers who nominally go through the motions of vetting the content. Slaughter of the Dissidents is so bad that Kevin Wirth had to publish it himself. We have to rely on his ability to distinguish fact from fiction. As we’ve seen in numerous comments he has left here, that isn’t one of his strengths. This is the guy who, in all seriousness, compared Ben Stein to Rosa Parks. Caveat emptor!
The very first blog ever to link to Bay of Fundie was Biblioblography by the Krystalline Apostate. I was over at his blog today catching up on his posts and discovered that he has been investigating Slaughter of the Dissidents himself!
His first article is “Slaughter Of The Dissidents – No Blood, No Guts, Just Whining…”. In this article, KA looks at the web page shilling the book and shoots down some of its wilder claims. (I wrote a similar article here. Read them both and compare! Collect the whole series!)
Sure enough, Kevin Wirth’s Google Alert told him that somebody was laughing at his book, so he dropped by and left a couple of long comments. He mostly argued about what the definition of “is” is, or something. My mind wandered. Kevin Wirth is like Ray Comfort. Neither is capable of comprehending what somebody has written, so they spend all their time arguing about what they think the person wrote.
A few days later, the Krystalline Apostate posted his second article in the series. In this article, he specifically looks at the case of one of the victims whiny little creatards named Raymond Damadian. Damadian was one of the contributors to the invention of the MRI. When the Nobel committee was passing out awards later for this achievement, Damadian was passed over, allegedly because he was a creationist. Defenders of the Nobel prizes said that wasn’t the reason at all. Damadian had done some essential early work, but he hadn’t contributed to the actual later invention of the MRI.
I’m on Damadian’s side in this case. I doubt he was passed over because he was a creationist. I haven’t seen evidence to indicate that. I think he was passed over because he hadn’t contributed enough to the invention. But heck! Barrack Obama didn’t do anything, and he got a Nobel Prize! The bar seems pretty low here.
KA’s next article in this series concerns the infamous non-slaughtered Guillermo Gonzalez. The short version is that Gonzalez really was (indirectly) “slaughtered” for being a creationist. What happened is that he spent all of his time pursuing his little religious hobby (creationism) that he didn’t spend enough time doing any of the things a college professor should be doing, such as research. As a result, he was denied tenure. Oh boo hoo!
Tell you what, Gonzalez. I’m going to spend all of my waking hours the next couple of weeks playing World of Warcraft. Then after I get fired for not doing my job, I’ll bitch about being discriminated against. I fully expect you and your buddies at the Discovery Institute to give me a job then. It worked for you.
KA’s next article covers Roger Dehart. He was a public school teacher who got away with teaching creationism in his biology classes for 14 years. When the district finally caught on (and why did it take that long?), did they fire him? Did they “slaughter” him? No! They should have, but they didn’t. No. All they did was take away his biology classes and made him teach geology instead. Umm… guys. That’s not such a good idea. You see, creationists have a thing or two to say about geology as well.
Anyway, this clown later resigned and got himself a sweet gig lying to kids at a Christian school. Oh, the slaughter!
KA’s final article is about Dean Kenyon, whose career was so slaughtered that he still has it.
What really makes this article such a treat is that it (along with most of the others) has a long, rambling comment at the end posted by Kevin Wirth. You have to read his comment on this article. Here are Kevin’s actual words:
After all, that’s what you evolution folks do best! You just tell the part of the story that aligns with what is consistent with your views, and ignore or trash the more challenging stuff as irrelevant! Case closed! Nice and tidy, right?
Kevin Wirth for the win!
Note: For those who are interested, here are my articles dealing with Slaughter of the Dissidents:
- How the Fallen Have Fallen: Jerry Bergman Stoops to Kevin Wirth
- Freedom Fighter Kevin Wirth Fights Freedom
- Slaughter of the Intellect
- Kevin Wirth has the Vapors
That last article has an excellent comment by Jason Failes, who researched some of the alleged victims of this wholesale slaughter of “Darwin skeptics’” careers. Jason also has a great quote in there:
Remember, you have a right to your own opinions, not to your own facts.