{"id":231,"date":"2011-07-24T02:32:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-24T02:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2011\/07\/24\/martin-cohens-bizarre-review-further-thought\/"},"modified":"2011-07-24T02:32:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-24T02:32:00","slug":"martin-cohens-bizarre-review-further-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2011\/07\/24\/martin-cohens-bizarre-review-further-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Cohen’s bizarre review – further thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
A further thought on Martin Cohen’s review<\/a> of my book Believing Bullshit (scroll down for my first comment).<\/p>\n

I tell you what has surprised me somewhat. Although the book is provocatively titled, it is written in a fairly measured and qualified way, and certainly doesn’t go round saying all religion is bullshit, etc. It’s actually fairly polite about religion, I thought – I certainly intended it to be (I have no interest whatsoever in insulting religious people per se<\/span>). But the book has provoked some very strong emotional reactions, and insults, from some<\/span> religious (and non-religious) people (in fact other religious people have rather liked it, and said so).<\/p>\n

So what explains Martin Cohen’s astonishing review, packed full, as it is, with obvious falsehoods, blatant misrepresentations, etc?<\/p>\n

I am thinking, perhaps unfairly, that Dawkins is onto something with his “viruses of the mind<\/a>” idea. In effect, I am installing anti-viral software. The virus gets very aggressive when it detects what’s going on, immediately takes command of the subject and sends out a warning message to other infectees not to expose themselves to the contents of the book – even telling barefaced fibs about it in order to prevent the virus being attacked in others.<\/p>\n

It’s as if Cohen has been taken over by a mind-bot of some sort (not necessarily religious, I should add). His review is so weird, it’s almost like it’s not him that’s writing it, but the virus itself<\/span>.<\/p>\n

If so, then I forgive him. <\/p>\n

P.S. This is pure speculation, of course (it’s for, as those psychic hotlines put it, “entertainment purposes only”).
P.P.S. Hope this doesn’t mark me out as a “follower of His Holiness, Richard Dawkins”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A further thought on Martin Cohen’s review of my book Believing Bullshit (scroll down for my first comment). I tell you what has surprised me somewhat. Although the book is provocatively titled, it is written in a fairly measured and qualified way, and certainly doesn’t go round saying all religion is bullshit, etc. It’s actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}