SocraticGadfly: 6/12/05 - 6/19/05

June 18, 2005

If the fundies EVER AGAIN claim “persecution”

Let them see how the shoe pinches, with a Brooklyn College professor forced to decline his recent appointment to chair the sociology department because of his honest, Internet-posted sociological observations about atheism and theism., flipped the “on” switch in my brain that Pinker is the David Brooks of evolutionary psychology popularizers.

Now, as insightful writing, it’s basically drivel, as The Nation’s Katha Pollitt pointed out. As the holder of a graduate divinity degree, I can tell you its theological analysis is sophomoric. As someone who studied a bit of sociology as part of that degree background, I’m not sure the sociology is always tremendously better.

But, nonetheless, Brooklyn College is a public institution. This is a free-speech issue.

The one good thing that could come from this is a Supreme Court test case as to whether or not atheism is protected on First Amendment grounds.