Being one's own worst enemy. Rand Simberg links to a piece in Salon.com about the current antics of PZ Myers. I've been vaguely aware of Myers and his web site for some time; he seemed to be a compentent developmental biologist. He was pretty active in countering a lot of creationist nonsense back in the dawn epoch of the blogosphere, and helped to make Panda's Thumb a good site for evolution-related information.

Lately, however, Myers seems to have acquired a new mission; he decided that he was going to show all those stupid religious people just how stupid they are, and that this will cause the scales to fall from their eyes, and they will thenceforth no longer be stupid. (I admit I'm guessing about that last part. Really, it's not clear to me what the point of his cracker perforation stunt was. I'm tempted to believe that he is just reveling in his lately-found role of Big Bad Atheist – based on photos on his website, it apparently is allowing him to meet hot atheist chicks.)

Back in the early 90's, I happened to be eating dinner one night with a couple of fellow grad students as well as some of the faculty, and we got into a discussion about Richard Dawkins, whose "Blind Watchmaker" had come out a few years before. The general consensus, as I remember, was that Dawkins was a dogmatic asshole, but he might be a necessary dogmatic asshole to counteract the d.a.'s of the creationists. Without tireless haranguers like Dawkins around, the argument went, biologists would have no equivalent to the likes of Phillip Johnson or Michael Behe.

Over time, though, Dawkins switched over from defending and promoting the study of biological evolution to attacking theistic religion, which I'm sure he probably sees as consistent, logical, even necessary, but makes him sound like the lead debater for the local Junior High Atheist's Club. PZ Myers seems to be angling for the Dawkins mini-me spot with the cracker stunt, and glorying in all the vituperative e-mail showered upon him by dimwitted Catholics.

"Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet" Myers says, but I would guess the likelihood of anybody being jolted into the light of Reason by virtue of his stunt would hover somewhere around zero. More likely, Myers has reinforced the stereotype of the arrogant scientist in the minds of those he sought to antagonize, which doesn't seem like progress. "...people are so goddamned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid. And nothing makes them stupider than religion," says Myers. Ah, but there's the rub – where's Myers' proof that religion makes people stupid – or rather, stupider? Why does Myers think that taking taking religion away from the stupid would make them less stupid or harmful? Perhaps a world of stupid, irreligious people would be even nastier than a world of stupid religious people?

Which leads to another grad school culinary flashback, this time at a sidewalk teriyaki joint eating with a labmate and the labmate's mother, in town for a visit. The mother, a prim, petite woman, after giving me a short history of her life, told me in a charming German accent, "In the old days, the stupid people had religion. Now, they just have television." The truth of the comment didn't really hit me then, but since I have seen it in operation a hundred times.*

*Not television sensu stricto. "Politics" works as well, as would many other things.

Posted by David Fleck at 03 August 2008 02:28 PM