February 2, 2008

Namecalling

Buried in a programmer’s experience learning, loving and leaving lisp is this gem:

“Ignorant” is not a pejorative term. If you think it is you are ignorant and you need to go look the word up in a dictionary.

This is brought to mind by PZ Meyer’s debate yesterday (MP3 link) with Geoffrey Simmons, a fellow from the Discovery Institute, wherein PZ was criticized for claiming (correctly) that Simmons was ignorant about the topic at hand (transitional fossils in the evolution of whales) – a topic that Simmons brought up in the first place. It’s just too entertaining.