Monday, June 09, 2008

Pharyngula

There is a glowing tribute to P.Z. Meyers' blog Pharyngula in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (intelligencer??) Meyers is similar to Dawkins in his outlook:

"It's true that a number of good scientists also have religious beliefs," he said. "I'm not saying they are not good scientists. I'm just saying they also appear to believe in a magic sky fairy."

The genesis of Meyers' religious convictions is also outlined:

Myers, 51, said he didn't start out to wage a war on religion. He was raised a Lutheran, he said, and went to Sunday school as a boy growing up in Seattle's suburbs. In 2003, he launched Pharyngula (the word refers to one stage in vertebrate embryonic development) as a tool to assist his students' writing projects.

"I just see science as a wonderful thing that everyone should be excited about," Myers said. But he soon discovered that presenting even the most basic facts of his particular branch of science, evolutionary biology, provoked angry denunciations and even personal attacks by those who saw it as an assault on their religious beliefs.

The war was on. The Lutheran boy from Kent became one of the world's leading atheists, speaking from the pulpit of science.

So once again, we have another scientist who has a bad experience with creationists and, using somewhat twisted logic, throws belief in God out the window. Does anyone else have a problem with this? Myers is at once insulting and irrational in his attacks on religion. That he had such bad experiences with Christians does not excuse their behavior which can be abominable and very unChrist-like. I know this from personal experience. It does not, however, qualify as a logical position.


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