Author: PZ Meyers
PZ Meyers is an American biologist. He is associate-professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM).
Atheism’s Third Wave
The gods are all dead. Science killed them. When beliefs are tissues of fantasy papering over ignorance, all it takes is honest inquiry to destroy them . . . and what we’re seeing now in the centuries after the Enlightenment is an erosion of god-belief. As a scientist, it’s hard to avoid bursting out in …
What Do You Say to 20,000 Wet Atheists?
On March 24, 2012, approximately twenty thousand godless folk gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C., for the Reason Rally. I was one of the speakers late in the afternoon of a rainy but inspiring day. This is roughly what I said: It’s the late afternoon of a long day; it’s raining, I have to …
Remembrances of an Enduring People
One of the tragedies of humanity is that we’re all mortal—every one of us, and everyone we know and love, will someday die. Our forebears, to whom we owe our existence, are all gone or going. Another aspect of this great tragedy is the transience of our knowledge: not only will we die but memory …
The Evolution Elevator Pitch
Apparently, this is all the rage among the cool kids nowadays: condense a subject down to such a short summary that you could explain it during a short elevator ride. On the one hand, it shortchanges ideas that take years to even adequately grasp and panders to short attention spans. On the other hand, it’s …
The Need for Confrontation
I’m going to begin with where I entered this conflict—and make no mistake, it’s a real battle—with my experience in science education and specifically with the teaching of evolution. Biology has been a lifelong passion for me, and when I first began teaching back in the 1980s, it was a shock to discover students who …