SeattlePI

And controversy follows evolution's staunch champion

For about three days, a former Kent boy was the world's top blogger simply because he was refused entrance to a movie theater.

PZ "Paul" Myers, a Seattle-area native born and raised in Kent, a University of Washington biology graduate and now professor of evolutionary biology at a small branch campus of the University of Minnesota in the western rural community of Morris, is also a leading blogger on science at Pharyngula (scienceblogs.com/pharyngula).

If Seattle's Discovery Institute can be described as one of the leading challengers of standard evolutionary science (as an advocate of a religion-friendly theory of human origins known as intelligent design), Myers can be as fairly described as one of the leading defenders of evolution and among the most entertaining opponents of religious creationism.

"It's true that a number of good scientists also have religious beliefs," he said. "I'm not saying they are not good scientists. I'm just saying they also appear to believe in a magic sky fairy."

Myers, who is visiting family in Seattle this week and speaking to various organizations (including a Friday evening chat with the Seattle Skeptics group), got his biggest blog hit a few months ago after going to see an advance screening of the anti-evolution movie "Expelled" at Minnesota's Mall of America.

The movie, starring Ben Stein, makes the case that alternative theories to standard evolutionary theory (i.e., intelligent design or creationism) are suppressed by much of academia and the scientific community. But at an early screening of the film, it was Myers who got expelled. The filmmakers saw the Minnesota biology professor in the waiting line and pulled him out, denying him access, even though he had been interviewed and was featured in the film.

"Yeah, I'd say it was kind of ironic," Myers said. His blog on this in Pharyngula stirred up a media firestorm and was for three days in late March, he says, the world's top hit for any blog, not just science blogs.

Oddly, he noted at the time, the director of the movie apparently failed to recognize that standing next to him in line was Richard Dawkins, the famed British evolutionist and strident atheist -- who was also interviewed for the film. Both scientists said they were fooled into doing the interviews and didn't realize the film was being produced by organizations devoted to undermining evolution.

Myers, 51, said he didn't start out to wage a war on religion. He was raised a Lutheran, he said, and went to Sunday school as a boy growing up in Seattle's suburbs. In 2003, he launched Pharyngula (the word refers to one stage in vertebrate embryonic development) as a tool to assist his students' writing projects.

"I just see science as a wonderful thing that everyone should be excited about," Myers said. But he soon discovered that presenting even the most basic facts of his particular branch of science, evolutionary biology, provoked angry denunciations and even personal attacks by those who saw it as an assault on their religious beliefs.

The war was on. The Lutheran boy from Kent became one of the world's leading atheists, speaking from the pulpit of science.

"Religion and science are fundamentally incompatible," Myers contends. "Religion has a corrosive influence on thought. I do this because I've made a commitment to an ideal based on reason, evidence and skepticism."

Speaking to a large crowd at the Pacific Science Center on Monday, Myers singled out the Discovery Institute for special abuse. The organization is the leading proponent of an alternative theory to standard evolution, intelligent design, that many scientists like Myers regard as creationism -- the belief that God, or some divine being, created everything -- disguised as science.

"They had this pretense of being a secular scientific organization but most people now see through the facade," Myers said. The much-publicized legal fight in the school system of Dover, Pa., exposed the Discovery Institute for distorting scientific evidence to try to sneak religion into required science courses.

"As a result, they're now struggling to reinvent themselves and to become relevant again," Myers said.

Not so, said John West, associate director of the institute's center for science and culture. Intelligent design allows for the possibility of some kind of ultimate intelligence behind everything, West said, but their research "doesn't start from a religious premise." He rejected Myers' contention that they are "creationists."

West noted that one of their scientists, Douglas Axe at the affiliated Biologic Institute in Redmond, just this week had an article describing his computer simulation of protein evolution published in the prestigious online science journal, the Public Library of Science.

"We're not proposing the book of Genesis as a scientific textbook," West said. "We just think science and religion are friends, not enemies."

Some of those who attended Myers' talk at the science center, which was sponsored by the Northwest Science Writers Association and the UW student-run Forum on Science, Ethics and Policy, also challenged the Minnesota biologist as being too extreme. Some contended he was a scientific "fundamentalist" and that he was denigrating many leading scientists who happened to also believe in God.

Myers said he accepts that you can be a brilliant practitioner of science and still hold strong religious beliefs.

"It's clear that people are quite capable of holding contradictory views," he said. "If you want to believe in a magic sky fairy, go ahead. But you can't do it without compromising on science."

IF YOU GO

PZ Myers will be speaking with the Seattle Skeptics group Friday (6/6) at 6:30 p.m., at the Rock Salt Restaurant, 1232 Westlake Ave. N., Seattle. For more info on the event, see seattleskeptics.org.