A bad day for atheism

You know me…I loathe crusading Creationists and those who might try and sneak their nonsense in under the radar, but the hounding of Professor Michael Reiss from his post as director of education at the Royal Society is pretty scandalous.

It seems to me that the press took his entirely reasonable argument that educators need to engage with children who believe in this stuff (rather than dismiss their beliefs out of hand) chopped out the context and full meaning of his remarks, and gave it to various hot-headed quote robots in the hope of creating some argy-bargy. They seem to have Richard Dawkins on speed dial, and he always picks up. Is he lonely? (And didn’t he learn anything from the Peter Kay nonsense?)

Now Reiss has resigned and the press, having done their bit to reduce another issue to the level of a boxing match, moves on. People like Dawkins should know better, though–it’s this kind of contemptuous fundamentalism that led to the idiocy of Creationism in the first place.

I think it’s a bad moment for atheists. We don’t come out of this one smelling good at all.