About "Spiritual Snake Oil: Fads & Fallacies in Pop Culture" by Chris Edwards, Ron said:
...I have read the entire essay at this point and it is my impression that the author is not very well read on the topic of philosophy in general. Also, he seems to be addressing those interpreters of Pirsig who do fit the description of "new age mysticism " and that's where the the argument begins to get fragmented and it's unclear what point Edwards is trying to make besides defending scientific materialism. A blast from the past. dmb says: I also thought the author was being philosophically naive and had badly misread Pirsig. It wasn't easy to find out who he is, partly because he has a very common name and partly because he sometime writes under another name. The book in question is sometimes attributed to Chris Edwards, sometimes to S.C. Hitchcock, and sometimes attributed to both of them as if he were his own co-author. As it turns out, he's just a high school teacher with an atheist axe to grind. He wrote a similar book for kids (Disbelief 101), which has been described as "chatty" and "totally irrelevant". The Barnes and Noble page for his "Snake Oil" says: "S.C. Hitchcock [a.k.a. Chris Edwards] is one of the most promising young "New Atheist" writers. He has written for the two most prominent American skeptical magazines, "Free Inquiry" and "Skeptic," as well as a number of smaller periodicals. He is also the author of "Disbelief 101" (See Sharp Press, 2009), which "Booklist" called "chatty, totally irreverent"." http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/spiritual-snake-oil-chris-edwards/1111811765?ean=9781937276140 I also found out that the second chapter of his book (the one on Pirsig) was originally published in Skeptic Magazine. "In this week’s eSkeptic, Chris Edwards provides some much-need maintenance on the fallacious reasoning found in Robert Persig’s [sic] ever-popular Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Chris Edwards is a frequent contributor to Free Inquiry magazine, and the author of Disbelief 101: A Young Person’s Guide to Atheism which is written under a pseudonym of S.C. Hitchcock. His philosophy of education has been published by the National Council for Social Studies." http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-04-28/#feature But what strikes me as the most obvious flaw is that he attacks Pirsig for views that he does not hold. He accuses Pirsig of theism, of being anti-scientific and for reifying concepts but that is pretty much the opposite of Pirsig's view. The MOQ is an atheistic philosophy. It's even anti-theistic in some respects. Pirsig criticizes scientific materialism in order improve science, to make it more empirical than it already is, and the MOQ is one great big anti-reification program. I had considered recruiting some help to develop a detailed defense of the MOQ but now I honestly do not think the book deserves that much attention. I began reading the chapter in question almost hoping to find a valid point or two but honestly could not find any valid criticisms, not even one. I'm convinced that the guy simply doesn't know what he's talking about. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
