Making the World Safe for Atheists

Last Monday afternoon my 15-year-old son Ryan and I drove down the tremendous Feather River Canyon to Chico to see the great biologist/blogger PZ Myers at a small gathering arranged by the Skeptical Students Alliance. PZ is a professor at U Minn at Morris and his blog Pharyngula is an important [I believe] collection of science news, humor, and ammunition for people who believe in quality science education in the battle(s) to keep religion out of science classrooms and politics. It is embarrassing to me that only about 40% of Americans accept the fact of evolution. The great scientist Charles Darwin who developed the theory of natural selection as a giant step toward understanding evolution once said "all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service." [ I got that quote off PZ's blog.] As a naturalist, I think virtually all my observations in nature support the fact of evolution.
PZ had been touring California for a week, speaking at a different college every day, by the time he arrived in Chico Monday afternoon. My son and I drove through the Canyon in a driving rain, and during one pee stop got this photo of a beautiful geologic phenomenon around 15 miles west of the Greenville Y. It was a reminder of the incredible dynamics going on beneath us all the time. Also, it provides habitat for all sorts of interesting microorganisms, extremophiles, conjuring up images of what the first life on Earth might have been like.
We arrived at the Graduate by 4:00. It was a noisy restaurant/pool hall/bar that many college students must love, but, for my tastes, not a great place to host a distinguished scholar. We enjoyed it anyway, straining to hear PZ's answers to the many questions posed by the group, all of whom were obviously quite familiar with his blog.
While PZ is an "out" atheist, and he has a book about atheism coming out soon, his crusade [probably not the best term here] has to do with fighting off the agressive attempts by religious fundamentalists to promote "alternative theories" to the modern theory of evolution when there aren't any. Manufacturing new terms - first creation science, then intelligent design - to masquerade religion as science and fighting for "equal time" in science classrooms has the intended effect of interrupting science education. Intelligent Design is not a theory, it is a religious belief. PZ believes science educators need to do a much better job of teaching students what a theory actually is, and that science is based on evidence. Scientific theories must be testable and capable of being proven wrong. It's a huge subject, and very important. For beginners, check out Pharyngula. Also, there's a blog called Halfway There written by a math professor who saw a couple of PZ's talks and posted transcripts.
I write about the event and the issue here because they greatly impact thesubject of natural history. Soon, I will be posting an essay I'm calling The History of Natural History. In a nutshell, most naturalists a couple of hundred years ago were creationists and used traps and shotguns to gather lots of specimens. Then, over time, Darwin's theory was accepted by virtually all biological scientists and naturalists and the shotgun gave way to the camera and field journal. Natural historians came to see themselves as an integral part of nature rather than as detached observers. Progress? I think so.
I'll finish this with my favorite quote from Galileo (paraphrased) "I cannot believe that a god would give us the faculty for thinking then forbid us to use it." Oh, the middle photo, taken by my son, shows PZ Myers on the right, eating a hamburger, and me on the left, eating a gardenburger, and the president of the students' club (didn't get his name) in the middle.