Mike, Mike, Mike…
What did I ever do to deserve this? Specifically, your remarks about our creationist neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor:
In his “response,” “Egnor” manages to completely distort pretty much everything about my article, in a way that is so ham-fistedly inept that it is simply impossible for me to continue to believe that the “Michael Egnor” articles are being written by a real person who really believes what he (or she) writes…It’s been fun while it lasted, but the game’s over now. Would whoever is really writing this stuff please take this opportunity to own up to it? Please? Come on, I know it’s got to be someone who is a regular here…Orac springs to mind as a possibility. He’s definitely got a good sense of humor, and I recently found out that the fictional computer that he takes his pen name from was created by a scientist named “Ensor.” It’s only one letter off, and “Egnor” does have that onomatopoeic ring to it.
True, Mike does then go on to say that he doesn’t think it’s me and gives good reasons; but even a joke that Dr. Egnor and I might be one in the same is profoundly disturbing. That being said, sadly, I’m pretty sure that Mike is incorrect in his speculations. There is simply too much evidence that Dr. Egnor exists, is a Professor of Neurosurgery at SUNY Stony Brook; and has fallen deeply into the pseudoscience that is “intelligent design creationism.”
Personally, I speculate that Dr. Egnor’s fallen victim to the arrogance that some surgeons, alas, sometimes fall prey to. So confident is he in his intellect that he thinks he can understand this whole evolutionary biology thing without actually bothering to study it. He thinks he’s figured it out from the material that the Discovery Institute has no doubt spoon-fed him, so much so that he has convinced himself that he knows as much or more than scientists who have dedicated their professional careers to the study of evolution. Add to that a visceral hatred of the concept of evolution, which he apparently considers Godless and responsible for eugenics, despite his recent admission that eugenics is not Darwinian, and you have an enthusiastic new Discovery Institute shill that they like to trot out at every opportunity because, you know, he’s a neurosurgeon.
In any case, I assure Mike that I am most definitely not Dr. Egnor. After all, Dr. Egnor so lacks a sense of humor that I just can’t picture him using EneMan as a blog mascot.
Time to find those Tibetan monks again to do a job for me.
