Rabbi Moshe Averick, author of The Confused, Illusory World of the Atheist , tells us the sad story of the “Orthodox Rabbi vs. Atheistic Biologist Who Won’t Put his Money Where his Mouth is: A History.” The “atheist bigot”in the story is surprise, surprise gnu atheist Jerry Coyne (“Why Evolution Is True”):
I have some very sad news to report…Dr. Jerry Coyne (Zealous Atheist – Professor of Biology at the U. of Chicago), and I (Orthodox Rabbi – Fearless Crusader for Belief in God and Spirituality)…are breaking up. I know it’s hard to believe, but our passionate, tempestuous, whirlwind affair has come to an end. In his final letter to me Jerry wrote: “I’m done with Averick, and certainly will not accept his invitation to meet and discuss whether God created the first organism.” The hottest love has the coldest end – Socrates
Regular readers will remember that Moseh Averick’s key issue is the non-science around the origin of life. His sparring with Coyne on that topic can be viewed here (“An Open Letter to Dr. Jerry Coyne, from the Maverick Rabbi”), here (“Should Darwin’s defender Jerry Coyne get silver medal for “sheer crudeness”?”), and here (“Reb Moshe Averick, skeptic of nonsense marketed as science, mixes it up again with Jerry “Why Evolution Is True” Coyne”), for example.
So, what ha-a-a-a-ppened? Why are we deprived, with no apparent just cause, of our regular dose of Maverick? Well, after a discussion of numerous occasions on which Coyne found it hard to understand why an intelligent Jewish person would disagree with him,
9. 12/22/11 – (Don’t worry we’re almost finished) I offer to bury the hatchet and hold out the peace-pipe to Dr. Coyne with: Dr. Jerry Coyne: My Culturally-Jewish, Atheistic, Biologist Bro’ at the University of Chicago: “It does not seem to me that a simple disagreement about the origin of life should be cause for me and Dr. Coyne to be at each others throats. Jerry, I am respectfully answering your challenge and would like to “come at you bro.” Let’s stop fighting over the internet and meet in person and have a mature, civil discussion about Origin of Life….The more I think about it the better it sounds. After all, we do have quite a bit in common; two nice Jewish boys in Chicago who love Hyde Park, who love to hack away at our word processors, who thoroughly enjoy an honest battle of ideas, and most important of all, we both love pastrami sandwiches!” I even sent him a “virtual gift” of kosher pastrami as a peace-offering.
But, the skinny,
In his final post where he announced the “break-up” and that he would not meet me in a debate, the nicest thing he had to say was that I was a “sexist” actively engaged in enslaving and oppressing women on every continent.
Wow! The Reb has that kind of pull? Here we figured he was lucky to just keep some Jewish families faithful – the rabbi’s perennial quest. Anyway, Rev Averick finishes with
Frankly, it is clear that Dr. Coyne was relieved that he found a good excuse not to discuss or debate the issue of Origin of Life with me in an open forum. Origin of Life is the soft, defenseless underbelly of the façade of “scientific” support for an atheistic worldview.
Well, we wish Moshe Averick a tougher opponent.
By the way, James Shapiro, currently sparring with the ID theorists, admits that origin of life is still on the fringe of science. It’s hardly a new or unreasonable idea.
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