The Digg Delusion
My first attempt at a serious-ish blog post…
There was I, pootling through Digg, as one does while waiting for an enormo file to copy, when I came across this post:
http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Richard_Dawkins_makes_Time_100_get_screwed_up_in_his_profile
It describes how Dawkins had his write-up in Time’s top 100 folk done by an advocate of intelligent design. What I found interesting was quite how quickly the thread degenerated into “mock the creationsist”, now I find this stuff as amusing as the next man, and complaining about the penchant for hyperbolae on Digg seems unlikely to have great results:
But in this case it's an issue as Dawkins spends a pretty large proportion of his latest book complaining that atheists are under-represented in politics and culture, and that this prevents the formation of groups sizable enough balance religious lobbies. It’s mildly interesting to note that the new digg-based democracy seem firmly in his camp. But perhaps a little too firmly? The problem that I had with God Delusion is that it advanced its argument with a fervour that seemed to be almost religious itself, and further polarised an already very impassioned debate. I’m a bit concerned that digg-like sites are set up to favour strong opinions over reasoned ones.
This is a
Comments
God delusion...great book. Pity, like you say, that his style of writing is somewhat snide and nose thumbing. Mostly very witty and good, but sometimes RD clearly plays into the hands of his religious opponents by simply not being able to resist having childish, erm, dig (one g).
Posted by: Willy | June 11, 2007 02:34 PM