That’s so sweet

I’m being prayed for.

A prayer for the soul of PZ Meyers

Dear God of Enduring Love, The atheist evilutionist and liberal elite college professor PZ Meyers has lost The Way and says some of the MOST hateful things about Your Work on this Earth and Republic that it is easy to understand why good Christians would pray for the Absolute Damnation of his soul to an eternity in the Hellfire of the Beast. The darkness of his Soul must cause you at least as much pain as do the souls of Muslims and Jews. Dear God, please find in Your great Heart warmth to share in the heart of PZ Meyers, or otherwise, he will continue to perform the Demon’s Duty and steal other souls from you. And please make it difficult for the computers of children and teenagers to visit his many websites where he proclaims his Dark Message of despair and secularization so that their impressionable bodies and minds are not brought under his spell.

I am always so pleased to see my opponents appeal to the impotency of a non-existent being through the ineffectual medium of talking to themselves.

All the mistakes of the godly are merely metaphor

Imagine you found a population in the US where the majority of the people believed that 2+2=5, and that attempts to correct them with the actual, correct result of adding two numbers were regarded as insults to their revered traditions. I think we’d all agree that they a) they were wrong; b) they were misled, misinformed, and miseducated; c) that they were ignorant of arithmetic; or d) might very well have been maliciously deceived by someone in their midst. Somehow, though, if the ridiculous error involves God, some people take a big step backwards and are appalled that anyone might criticize them. Those “revered traditions” become more than mere excuses, they are inviolate.

You guessed it, once again someone was aggravated that I have dared to call adherence to religious belief a case of being “ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed.” This time our indignant contestant is Mark A. R. Kleiman, who considers it atheistic bigotry to enumerate the reasons why people might come to absurd and erroneous conclusions. That 80-90% of this population, which is not hypothetical at all but is the entire US, believes that chanting their wishes into the sky might get them granted by a magic being, or that over half use the excuse of their religious dogma to reject the basic facts of modern biology, is something we must not question and especially must not criticize. Because it is religion, it must be respected.

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You sickos!

Matt asks a weird question: he’s wondering who is the target of the sickest web searches. I should recuse myself, because I thought I got no perverts searching for me: after all, I think searching for “sex with a spider” or “penis tentacles” is perfectly normal. But I took a look at the search terms anyway, and I was appalled—there actually are several very common phrases people use to find their way here that I find objectionable.

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It’s still going on?

I was interviewed on a website over a month ago, and unfortunately John A. Davison and his infected polyp, VMartin, took over the comments there and went on and on in their ridiculous way.

They’re still going at it. Even more absurdly, the droning duo are bragging on ISCID, in an awesome example of pretentious self-delusion:

658 comments and going strong again. Are there any brave souls here that are willing to join Martin and myself in this incredible demonstration that there are still those who believe that life in all its manifestations was an accident? Are Martin and myself the only ones who reject that by publicly challenging the two major exponents of that bizarre philosophy, Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Meyers, both of whom have remained silent? So it would seem. I am sure Martin agrees with me that we welcome any or all to join in this most fundamental of discussions at a venue which was arrogantly introduced by the author of the thread on which he is now afraid to speak.

Opportunities like this do not occur every day and they should not be ignored. They reveal a philosophy without foundation that deserves to be thoroughly exposed and One Blog A Day presents a rare opportunity to challenge the Darwinian fantasy and its two most vocal supporters in a reasonably neutral venue. Perhaps others can produce a response from the two most prominent atheist biologists of the present time. Martin and I can’t seem to achieve that most desirable result.

Uh, “incredible demonstration”…of what? Somebody sure has an over-inflated opinion of his “most fundamental of discussions” … and obviously, I’m not afraid of them. I do have to apologize to the poor owner of the OneBlogADay site, though; I’m sorry a couple of parasites piggy-backed on my interview to infest you, but hey, here’s a link and a little more traffic to make up for it, I hope.

Davison has made a revealing comment:

In the meantime Martin and I have scored another conquest by being banned at The Loom.

Someone cut their ISP cable, quick, and reward them with a complete victory over the whole of the internet.

The most important battle in the history of mankind!

The most important battle in the history of mankind!

A bit more than a week ago, I mentioned this interview I did for a site called One Blog A Day. The comment thread on the interview has grown in a peculiar way — John A. Davison and his pet sycophantic monkey, VMartin, are babbling away in a most painfully lunatic fashion, cruelly egged on by wÒÓ†. It’s hard to beat this comment for delusions of grandeur:

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How common!

Here’s a good reason why I prefer to go by the name “PZ”:

HowManyOfMe.com
Logo There are:
1,184
people with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

Too dang many “Pauls,” and an awful lot of “Myers,” too.

(I shall mention that there are almost 5 times as many people named “Myers” as “Meyers,” so why does everyone spell my last name wrong?)

Creationist email to the fraternity

One more piece of creationist email for you: this one was addressed to me and all of my fraternity of Godless Atheists, which I think means you readers here. Never mind protesting that some of you are Christian—get used to it, to these guys you will never be truly Christian.

Anyway, it’s not a very entertaining letter. It was, as usual, amusingly formatted (Outlook Express is evil software), but I’ve stripped all that gunky Microsoft html out of it to simplify posting it. It’s your usual argument from poorly understood physics: the Big Bang is evidence of Jesus, really tiny numbers prove Jesus, mangled information theory proves Jesus. It does have one novel argument I haven’t seen before, that a kitchen spray bottle proves Jesus, but I don’t think it’s going to get much traction in the scientific community. I haven’t bothered to reply to it, but if anyone wants to shred the nonsense in the comments, maybe the authors will find it online.

Oh, and welcome to the Atheist Fraternity! Remember, we’re getting together with the Atheist Sorority on Friday night for a Toga Party!

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I get no respect

Here’s the difference between me and Michael Bérubé: he gets labeled a dangerous radical and profiled in David Horowitz’s new book, while all I get is a
mild squeak in our weekly campus newspaper and our local conservative rag.

While perusing the UMM main page, I happened upon the website http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula which belongs to UMM’s own Professor of Biology Dr. Meyers. Upon closer inspection I found content relating to my religious beliefs that offended me beyond belief. Not only was this speech sacrilegious and offensive, but it was readily available to anyone who happens across the UMM main page. The portion of content which I found most offensive was written under the label “humor,” and his blog is in fact up for an online award. Yet despite my outrage I must defend Dr. Meyers. He has the right to state his opinions and it is not my place to try to stop him. I may suggest the administration take the link off the campus website, but that has more to do with the fact that the website speaks for the University as a whole.

He is a bit of a junior Horowitz—I kind of like how he’s bending over backwards to insist I have a right to free speech while calling for the university to censor me—but you know, he put this up almost two weeks ago and the only reason I noticed at all is that my wife ran across it. It’s just sad. I mean, if what I wrote was really sacrilegious and outrageous and offensive beyond belief, couldn’t they get a condemnatory petition going, or a protest march, or even get one of Horowitz’s junior sub-alterns to come out and give a talk in which he complains about not being allowed to give a talk, while my kidneys threaten Western Civilization?

Man, I’d even be satisfied if they just spelled my name right.

Flame war in the Durango Herald!

A while back, a reader mentioned that my name (or some permutation thereof) was being taken in vain in the letters pages of the Durango Herald. Nothing new there, it’s just the usual half-truths of the Discovery Institute being disseminated.

Challenges to evolution met with scorn

I find that some of the brightest people in the world today (as with some of the brightest people throughout history) disbelieve the theory of evolution.

As Paul Bynum correctly noted in his letter (Herald, Nov. 20), it is true that folks who dare to challenge some of evolution’s claims are, indeed, often ridiculed and maligned. Note the remarks of University of Minnesota biology P.Z. Meyers: that opponents of Darwinism need to be subject to “some form of righteous fury, much butt kicking and the firing and humiliation of some teachers, many school board members and vast numbers of sleazy far right politicians.”

…

Gary Andersen, Durango

There was more in the letter; the usual protestation that “Darwinists” are afraid, that there are “volumes of evidence of design all around us” (backed up by mentioning that birds fly and cats take naps), and that chance is a “dreary thought.” I responded with a short note pointing out that my quote was taken out of context, and that I’m not against challenging evolution, but am against incompetent teaching.

Creationists weaken science teaching

In a letter by Gary Andersen on 1 Jan 2006, I was quoted misleadingly, in a way that the Discovery Institute has consciously propagated. Yes, I have called for the firing of teachers and politicians, but not because they are “opponents of Darwinism”–but for incompetence. If a science teacher cannot grasp basic concepts of biology, he or she has no place teaching our children in the classroom. We are not afraid of Intelligent Design creationists, but we are getting increasingly angry at the disservice they are doing to our kids by weakening the science curricula in our high schools.

Mr Andersen claims there are weaknesses in the theory of evolution. Yes, there are, but the fact of evolution is not in doubt; there is active argument and research on specific details and mechanisms. Intelligent Design creationists are not participants in that work, and are actively promoting discredited ideas that are not supported by any evidence. Science class is not a place for garbled anecdotes and wishful thinking, yet that is all Mr Andersen has to offer—I think we can do better by our children.

Oh, and the name is Myers. One “e”. It’s bad enough to be misrepresented by the likes of the Discovery Institute and their minions, but they could at least spell the name correctly.

I am amused to see that the Durango Herald has published a reply. It shows the same level of incomprehension as the first letter.

Reaction shows evolutionists scared

In his letter (“Creationists weaken science teaching, Herald, Jan. 10) associate professor P.Z. Myers of Morris, Minn., suggested that anyone believing God created the universe “has no place teaching science in our classrooms.”

What an arrogant statement! Statements such as this reinforce the feeling that evolutionists are indeed quivering in fear.

…

Paul Bynum, Durango

Of course there is more ranting. I’m accused of “indoctrination and propaganda, and told that “All tyrants, Hitler, Stalin, etc., approve of and use this type of ‘education.'”

I think his argument is greatly weakened by the blatant quote mining of his very first sentence. You can rummage through the entire archive of my site, you can chase down every word I’ve ever said, and you can give me a Vulcan mind-meld and probe all of my thoughts, and you will not find me expressing or thinking that ridiculous sentiment anywhere. But of course, readers of the Durango Herald are most unlikely to even open up a week-old copy of their paper to assess the accuracy of the creationist’s claims. The creationists know their lies can spread faster than the truth, and they will continue to spout that kind of dishonesty shamelessly.

At least they learned how to spell my name properly.