PZ Myers: The war between science and religion - Part 11/12

Faith has intruded into education like never before. In America schools are fighting to keep evolution in their science curriculum while others are fighting to keep the religious movement called creationism out.

This is not only a fight in the United States. In Alberta the government funds up to 70% of some Christian fundamentalist schools. In Ontario catholic schools funded by all taxpayers frequently deny admission to non-Catholic students. In Quebec, the new faith and ethics course denies equal time to secular ethical worldviews like humanism.

Dr. PZ Myers has been a longtime critic of intelligent design and has written extensively on the topic on his popular blog http://www.scienceblogs.com/pharyngula . Earlier this year the Catholic League asked the University of Minnesota to take legal action against Myers after he publicly criticized those who had sent death threats and hate mail to a young man who took a communion wafer back to his seat and didn't consume it as expected.

Dr. Myers has shown frequent contempt for religion on his blog. He once ripped out pages of the Q'uran and threw them in the garbage with old coffee grinds and banana peels. His university dismissed the call for action by stating that their faculty is allowed to express themselves however they see fit.

Dr. Paul Z Myers, PhD is a professor of biology at The University of Minnesota, Morris campus. He works with zebra fish in the department of evolutionary developmental biology. His blog, Pharyngula is the most widely read science and atheism blog on the Internet. He is a self-avowed godless liberal and as such is one of the most vocal skeptics on all forms of religion, pseudoscience and superstition.

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[Aletheophile]

In the highly unlikely event that there is a god, it definitely isn't Yahweh. That's as much as i would publicly state with conviction.

[ananiasacts]

Think of how hard it is for someone to do something as simple as asking their city council to stop opening meetings with a prayer. Some organization should take on this issue and give people a way to report their city and have an external agency do something about it.

It's so minor no atheist is bound to care enough to even mention it. But the practice really is wrong and should be stopped to remind people that there must be a distinct and absolute separation of religion and government.

[STFUNOWlol]

What the chick talks about at the end of this video always bothers me. Why do some people insist on leaving that door open, like we can't say there is no god until we've learned everything about the universe there is to know. Science is as much about finding truth as it is identifying untruth. When the germ theory of disease became fully accepted, did anyone say "Well, we can't prove that evil spirits don't cause disease, so let's leave the door open on that."?

Of course not.

[tekproxy]

5:50 um excuse me wtf r u doin? attention whore much?

[Airlightf]

How do you know that the flying spaghetti Monster doesn't exist?

[personalsinr]

6:30 what is she wearing??? Was there a cosplay conference before PZ spoke?

[ananiasacts]

@jursamaj I believe we're in agreement. I'm more anxious to see the "Why would a decent person wish there to be a celestial dictator?" question pursued. I want to know how a decent person can overcome their repulsion at the idea of making "wrong thinking" a crime to endorse the 10 commandments. I think the case against religion is far stronger than its mainstream antagonists suggest. We should be giving greater exposure to sheer depravity of its tenets; like being absolved of sin, etc.

[jursamaj]

Oh, I wasn't arguing for "Let them believe what they want."

Pink-hair was saying PZ shouldn't say "God doesn't exist" basically because he can't prove it. She thinks he should use a form like I quoted: "Well, there's no evidence God exists, but I won't go so far as to say he *doesn't*." But we don't feel we have to fully qualify such statements about other things that we are equally certain don't exist even tho we can't 100% *prove* it.

I support PZ in saying clearly: "God doesn't exist."

[ananiasacts]

@jursamaj If that was all there was to it no one would care. But what about their attempts to control who can get married, what medical researchers are allowed to do, how science is taught, etc? You can put up a billboard in America that even suggests there might not be a god without dozens of religious people making threats to the owners until they take it down. The bottom line is that its an industry that turns decent people into unwitting criminals. Like what a lancet fluke does to ants.

[jursamaj]

@ananiasacts

It's really quite simple: nobody says "Well, there's no evidence Santa exists, but I won't go so far as to say he *doesn't*."

The same for dragons, fairies, orbital teapots, etc.

And gods.

[ananiasacts]

I wrote a blog essay to answer the woman with the pink hair. I see her point, and tried to explain that if she examines her position very carefully, she'll realize that she's arguing for the concept and a god, not an actual real god which she is against.

Ironically, I agree and think that single mistake is all that needs to be corrected to convert religions into bona fides sciences--searches for the set of fundamental beliefs that most empower and predispose us to find rewarding useful lives.