I was interviewed by Michael Beverly last week. It’s a two-parter, and I appear only at the end of this first video, which is mainly Dan Stern Cardinale and Jay Bundy talking about the problem of creationism. It’s good. You can bail out when they introduce me, because they were much too generous in their praise and I was cringing the whole time.
I contribute more in the second half…wait, that’s worse. Why am I recommending these videos in the first place? My appearance isn’t a good addition.
At least Michael Beverly is a good interviewer, and it’s always worthwhile to listen to Jay and Dan.
That was a great conversation and I’m glad I took the time to listen. I was around the Scienceblog incarnation and here for the whole of the atheist wars, from before PZ became a “famous atheist” through all that came after, and the meanderings of PZ, Jay, Dan, and Michael helped my brain get a better context for all that weirdness. I have gained an understanding that all the pain and energy we put into that was not just screaming into the void, that there were indeed people who were informed and even formed by those, ah, discussions, and that it did in some measure improve the playing field for newer voices. There may have been a few rusty porcupines cast about on the roads we chose, but we were making pretty good choices about what was important. (And, as I read political blogs these days, I like thinking of those good old rusty porcupines as an option.)
Wow, great stuff. I was in grad school from 2004-2010, in a slightly convoluted interdisciplinary situation, but my core identiy as a bench scientist was always molecular biologist. I can’t remember when I started following this blog, but it must have been in the context of the wake of Kitzmiller v Dover before the move from ScienceBlogs to FreethoughtBlogs (which I remember).
Of the Four Horsemen, I’ve only read a couple books by Dawkins: The Selfish Gene (which I understood in the context of having taken a graduate course in Molecular Evolutiion), and The God Delusion (which was low key pushed on me by one of those atheist envangelist friends but overall bored me).
But the reason I kept following you, Professor Myers, even after I lost interest in the “atheist A-listers,” was because I noticed the same thing your colleagues in the video pointed out, that your atheism wasn’t a endpoint of intellectual development, but a beginning, a starting position and framework for humanist moral values (remember “Atheism Plus”?). [Ok, fine, your developmental biology content sure didn’t hurt either. And at the time I probably still had a bit of a residual instinctive arachnophobia despite my biology education, which has now been cured. Praise Ungoliant!]
Speaking as an elder millennial, you’re the most Woke boomer I’m aware of, probably beating out Stephen King, even. 😛 I mean that as the highest compliment.
[drsteve, I venture to say Charlie Stross matches PZ at that. He has a blog]
@ ^ Charlie Stross? Isn’t he an SF author? :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross
Same person? :
Didn’t know about that. Thanks.
[Yes. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/ ]
BTW if you find stuff you think Charles Stross might want to know, don’t use Youtube links.
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Regarding the junior human, he seems easier to have around than cats would be in that situation.
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BTW while creationists can be found all over the world, their centre is USA – without the megaphones of US creationists they would probably soon fade into the ambience shared by UFO believers and other fringe groups.
Keep up the good work.