I’ve referred to Professor Paul Myers, and his blog Pharyngula on more than one occasion here, and I’ve probably lifted uncredited links from him a few more times (“bad blogger, no Google juice for you”). I definitely read his stuff among the first things every day.
Well, he’s the subject of the Science Friday interview today at Daily Kos.
I am in adamant agreement with him about the appropriate response of scientists to the current U.S. administation, and with his comments that imply the need to retake the term ‘liberal’:
DS: I think it’s fair to note you’re also pretty liberal, and that academics such as yourself are often criticized for being ‘too liberal’. How do you respond to that charge? What would you say to your more conservative scientific colleagues regarding the current political dynamic?
PZ: What conservative scientific colleagues? I don’t know of any. Sure, there are some more conservative than I am on social and economic issues, but one thing the Republican administration has done is draw us all together–this administration is so anti-science that it has united us all, as far as I know.
As far as the charge of being too liberal — no one can be too liberal. We can only be not liberal enough. Being liberal means one is for civil liberties, equality, social justice, fairness. We work to improve the world, not maintain the status quo, and especially not to enrich those who already have too much. How can someone be too liberal?
I also agree with everything he says in the interview about creationism/ID/evolution, and about religion versus science–although as I get older I tend to be less belligerent about presenting my opinions on religions & religiosity in adversarial contexts, unless there are other important issues affected by the religious thing.
Frankly, if someone makes it to their 30s with religion, the odds are pretty good I’m not going to change their minds–hell, the Jesuits thought they only needed the first 7 years to make you a believer for life.
The same reasoning that (now, as I mellow with age) lets me see when there is no point antagonizing someone who isn’t going to change their minds is what makes it so crucial to me that we don’t let this crazy stuff make its way into the schools–hence all the posts here about schools and ID, etc. So the area of education is one where I will still get very firm (read “antagonistic”) with the religious, as I will with those who think their religion should affect legal policy to deny the rights of some people (c.f. same sex marriage), but outside of these sorts of arenas I am mostly content to let the religious get comfortable with their myths where they don’t impinge on other people. Although I do reserve the right to mock the idea of faith in divine beings among other rationalists.
Paul, well he likes to get right in their face. ALL THE TIME. I remember when I was that passionate.
DS: You’re also unabashedly skeptical of super natural claims or the value of such ideas, be it Wahhibism or the more homegrown Neo-Christian right-wing variety. Is there room for compromise between religion and science in your view?
PZ: Sure. When religious superstition dissipates and wafts away before reason like a fog in the noonday sun, then we will have achieved an appropriate balance.
DS: Holy smokes, I can already see the angry e-mails coming in on this one … You serious?
PZ: Seriously, that’s the compromise. Religion is a clumsy farrago of myths and wishful thinking and old traditions which is irrelevant to our understanding of reality, and in fact often impedes our understanding. We lose nothing if it goes away. As people recognize its lack of utility, something that often (but not necessarily) happens as we learn more about science, it fades away. It’s like Santa Claus — as we learned more about how the real world works and how our parents fulfill all the roles of the fat old myth, we don’t mind seeing it go away.
Creationists know this, and that is why they’re afraid of science. I don’t need to preach atheism — all I need to do is point out the palpable structure of reality in the growing detail science provides for us, and those who are awake and aware will notice the disparity between the world around them and the clumsy, sterile, ludicrous fantasies of religion, and they’ll eventually abandon faith. Or, at least, they’ll throw away dogma and retire faith to a smaller, private part of their lives.
The Universe: it’s the Anti-Religion.
Yup, I agree with it. Maybe I should be poking the tiger more.
