2009-07-15 PZ Myers vs. Unscientific America: Part III

2009-07-15 \Chris Mooney\Sheril Kirshenbaum Discover Magazine \Unscientific America\PZ Myers vs. Unscientific America\PZ Myers http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/07/15/pz-myers-vs-unscientific-america-part-iii/ PZ Myers vs. Unscientific America: Part III PZ Myers vs. Unscientific America: Part III  9. Bigotry. At the end of his review, Myers says something astonishing. He claims that our "bigotry blinds [us] to a range of approaches offered by the 'New Atheists' ... a group that is not so closed to the wide range of necessarily differing tactics that such a deep problem requires as Mooney and Kirshenbaum are."

This is a baseless accusation. Chris is an atheist, and he is not bigoted against himself, his mother (an outspoken secular humanist), or any other atheists. Sheril is Jewish and agnostic, and not bigoted against Chris or any other atheists, either.

Myers provides no evidence of our supposed biogtry. He just makes an inflammatory accusation, one not at all conducive to rational or calm discussion.

It is precisely this kind of rhetoric that led us to address Myers so directly in Unscientific America.

..

10. The Trouble With PZ Myers. In his review, Myers doesn’t address our criticisms of him – of his public writings and actions. But we will end by elaborating upon why, in the wake of the communion wafer desecration, we decided we had to speak out about Myers in a way that would really be heard.

Though we have not said so until now, Myers is among the central reasons we left ScienceBlogs. There were many factors involved, of course, but one was our shock at what he calls "Crackergate." We describe the full incident in the book, but let us quote from Myers' words when he closed off comments (there had been over 2,000) after posting his picture of the defiled eucharist with a rusty nail driven through it:

What effort I put into [the desecration] was not in response to the reality of your silly deity, but in response to the reality of your dangerous delusions. Those are real, all right, and they need to be belittled and weakened. But don’t confuse the fact that I find you and your church petty, foolish, twisted, and hateful to be a testimonial to the existence of your petty, foolish, twisted, hateful god.

Now I’m afraid I’m going to have to close this thread. Its purpose has been well served: the fanatical Catholics and their crazy beliefs have been fully exposed. Over 2300 comments on this subject in 20 hours is quite enough.

Watching all of this, we were appalled. We could not see what this act could possibly have to do with promoting science and reason. ...and therein lies the problem: M&K apparently don't understand that sometimes the defense of reason requires standing up to unreason, rather than trying to negotiate with a worldview which sees negotiation solely as a tactic to get its own way.

Response: 2009-07-17 1414 Unscientific America - it's personal!

Note: Myers closed the thread largely for technical reasons (the page was becoming so large that keeping it "active" was consuming significant server resources), and discussion on the same topic continued (if I remember correctly) for several further posts. The post was closed for comments, but not the topic. M&K respond to 2 final areas of disagreement with PZ Myers's reviews of their book Unscientific America, under the headings of "Bigotry" and "The Trouble With PZ Myers".   