He's not dismissing it. He is saying we have got our priorities wrong.

You are being intellectually dishonest by adopting an artificially contrarian position and trying to pretend he was saying we had to choose one or the other just, it seems, for the sake of having a contrarian position.

You are wrong, but despite having an idiotic opinion you're not an idiot, tempting as it is to think that. You are just someone who thinks that just because they can form a banal opinion that means the opinion has any worth. It doesn't.