post-modern fundamentalists

Today I interviewed THOMAS CATHCART and DANIEL KLEIN about thier new book "Aristotle and an Aaardvark Go To Washington: Understanding Political Doublespeak Through Philosophy and Jokes". This is volume two of thier "Philogagging" trilogy, the third volume is due out next year and is on Life and Death. Talking to the two of them is like conversing with some weird and wild mythological creature that is part stand-up comedian and part logic professor. It's often out of control and you can hear me laughing my glutes off in the background. But there is always a very real and serious point to all the zaniness: namely that words and ideas matter, and there is nothing more heinous than contributing to the BS that passes for too much political and intellectual discourse in this country. Here is a quote from their book as to just how crazy it has become:

“Consider the paleontologist Marcus Ross, who wrote in his PhD dissertation that mosasaurs, a species of marine reptile, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era, about 65 million years ago. Dr. Ross also happens to be what is called a “young earth creationist” who believes the Bible is a literal account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most ten thousand years old. Asked how he reconciles these views, Ross says that methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, the scripture another. In other words, Ross is performing a trick that most philosophers have deemed impossible: holding two contradictory ideas in his mind at the same time. He has two different “paradigms” for determining the truth, and what is true under one paradigm is not necessarily true under the other. It’s a kind of relativism we don’t often associate with fundamentalists.” (pp.134)

Good to know that the Bible Belt has Derrida on the "must read" list.

Mark