PZ Myers Said That Scientific Thinking Has a Corrosive Influence on Religious Belief

DJ Grothe interviewed Professor PZ Myers as can be heard here in an interview entitled, "Science and Atheism in the Blogosphere."

Let us survey some of the exchange.

At 4:30 into the interview:

DJ: "What's most important to you: advancing atheism or advancing the public understanding of science - or are they kind of one in the same for you?"

PZ: "They are inseparable."

Let us pause here for a moment. This is PZ Myers' premise: science is not simply about observation, reproducible experiments and concocting theories but it is about getting rid of God, it is about atheist activism.

The statement above is directly followed by this exchange:

DJ: "You've suggested quite a few times that the more you know about science the more likely it is that you are gonna end up an atheist."

PZ: "Yes, that's, that's what we know from the statistics of people going into science. That science has a great corrosive influence on religious belief. It isn't always going to destroy religious beliefs, of course. There's, there's a number of fairly prominent scientists who are religious. But in general, most people, when they get training in the scientific method and start applying it in the lab and start applying it in their real life experiences, find themselves questioning religion a lot more."

DJ: "Yeah, Jonathan Miller had that study out a few years ago, you know, countries in Europe, people score higher in science literacy therefore, they were more accepting of, of evolution, more naturalistic. But, the University of Buffalo recently had a study, oh I think just in the last year, that suggested that it was a chicken and egg sort of thing. That people who were already kind of skeptical and secular ended up choosing to go into the sciences rather than the other way around."

PZ: "Yes I, I can see it working both ways. That's not earth shaking news either, I don't think. If you're into religion you are going to be steered away, by your own interests, from science. So there's, there is a self selection going on. But still, you know, we, we want more scientists right? We want more people thinking critically and skeptically about the world around them, it's something that we want to encourage lots more people [sic]."

Well, we appear to be at a stalemate as regards the chicken and egg. Certainly, people may become atheists after coming into the sciences and becoming more erudite than thou. But it could also be that people who were already skeptical and secular go into classrooms such as PZ Myers' in order to learn science or biology but they have atheism smuggled into their classrooms in the guise of science or biology. See my essay Protecting the Science Classroom.

At 7:22 into the interview:

PZ: "I think we are getting new recruits, I, I get emails all the time from people who are saying, 'Well thank you,' you know, 'this whole thing has lead me to be more self-aware, and criticizing, in coming to the conclusion that yeah, I'm an agnostic or I'm an atheist.'"

DJ: "It's the kind of coming out story that Richard Dawkins reports a lot of people recounting when they read his book 'The God Delusion.'"

PZ: "Oh yeah, yeah…"

It is interesting that they mention Richard Dawkins since I was instantly reminded of the interview between he and Ben Stein in the movie "Expelled." Richard Dawkins asserted that people feel liberated and relieved when they realize that God does not exist. Mr. Stein asks him how he knows that, he is after all speaking with an empirical scientist. Richard Dawkins responds that he receives letters from people to that effect. To which Mr. Stein states that there are some 8 billion people in the world and asks, "How many letters do you get?" Whatever statistically insignificant amount of letter or email either of the professors receive, this certainly constitutes a biased sample coming, as they do, from people who are motivated to contact them in order to either thank them, or buddy up to them, or congratulate them, etc. Besides, a thief may feel elated when he does not see any police officers in his general vicinity, so what of it?

At 8:31 into the interview:

PZ: "If you'd asked me when I was twelve-years-old I would of said, 'Yeah, I'm a committed Christian' and all this kind of thing. I wasn't born again or anything silly like that."

I do not want to make my following statement of greater scope than it can handle yet, PZ Myers is yet another in a very long line of atheists who rejected theism as children based on a childlike intellect and a childlike tendency, particularly teenage tendency, towards rebellion against authority. God, being the ultimate authority, must be done away with. This is one way in which atheism is a consoling delusion: it is the delusion of absolute autonomy and lack of ultimate accountability. Prof. Paul Vitz presents a very interesting lecture about atheism and rebellion: The Psychology of Atheism. As Paul Vitz states it, "…for every person strongly swayed by rational argument [in favor of atheism], there are countless others more effected by non-rational psychological factors."

At 17:44 into the interview:

DJ: "Just think of that phrase that you just said, 'corrosive influence of scientific thinking,' imagine what, what, what a fundamentalist could to with that. Ah, you know, PZ Myers himself said that scientific thinking has a corrosive influence."

PZ: "On religious belief, yeah. And, you know, if they threw that in my face what would I say? Say, 'Yeah, it sure does [laughter]."

This is why I, with my tongue firmly ensconced in my cheek, gave this essay its title. Let us contextually tie this statement back to his previous statements regarding "most people, when they get training in the scientific method and start applying it in the lab and start applying it in their real life experiences, find themselves questioning religion a lot more."

At 18:30 into the interview:

"I actually don't see even now how anyone can find the explanations in the book of Genesis at all satisfying as explanations for the real world. I meant it's, it's 'God did it,' said eight times, nothing more…look at the book of Genesis and you should be asking lots of questions about it."

PZ Myers appears to be making a category mistake in that he seems to be asking the Bible to tell him things that the Bible is not meant to explain. In my essay PZ Myers Complements Christianity I pointed this out with regards to him ripping a page out of the Bible because it did not meet his criteria. He seems to demand scientific minutia from books that are not meant to provide it.
In my essay "In the Beginning…": the Lucky Guess, I point out various scientifically accurate statements that the Bible makes about astronomy and cosmology. Thus yes, when you look at the book of Genesis you should be asking lots of questions about it. And the fact is that some of the greatest scientists that have ever lived, scientists who invented the very fields and methods of science, did ask questions in order to ascertain how God's creation functions.

At 19:03 into the interview:

DJ: "You're position about science leading to atheism is fundamentally at odds with the National Academies of Science [and?] the AAAF. They say, for instance, that evolution is perfectly compatible with religion."

PZ: "And they're, they're a little deluding themselves, yeah." [he believes that those statements are "pure political pandering"]

What is really at issue here is what we mean when we say "evolution." We may mean the observation of living organisms changing. We may mean telling tall tales about how things could have happened long, long ago based on out particular worldview. Or we could mean the inference that God does not exist (see my essay Do You Believe in Evolution?).

At 24:11 into the interview:

DJ: "But don't parents have a right to teach their children what they believe to be true without a professor undermining certain deeply held beliefs?"

PZ: "Why should they have that right? I mean, we've got a social contract right? And what we are trying to do is raise lots and lots of people who are going to be functioning members of our society. And it's in, in my personal self-interest that the children of evangelical Christians grow up to be productive members of society. Now, it's not my interest to say they have to abandon their faith or anything like that. But if their faith is such that it's obstructing their ability to contribute to science and technology, engineering and all these good things in our society then yeah, we have an interest in saying, 'No, you shouldn't be doing that.'"

As for the attitude that many atheists have that parents should not have a right to teach their own children that with which the atheist disagrees, I will point you to my essays: Teach Your Children Well and Daniel Dennett's One Way Street of Censorship.
Overall, this statement by PZ Myers may be indicative of just how high up and isolated in his ivory tower he dwells. The overwhelming majority of citizens of the USA are Christians and Christians have always been the majority. Thus, to presume that at any time in its history American Christians have not been functioning members of our society is to view the world through murky atheistic glasses. Evangelical Christians are not only productive members of society but active in the fields of science, technology, engineering etc. they just do not make the illogical inference of atheism from their fields of research.

What PZ Myers statements boil down to is an argument from authority: scientists are really smart and most of them are atheists therefore, atheism is true and if you study science and become really smart you too will become an atheist.

Had your fill of PZ related tales? No! Check him out.