Why The Silence?

We here at CMR have been the recipients of a number of inquiries as to why we have not yet commented on the PZ Myers controversy. I will tell you why in a moment.

As you know, last week we wrote about Webster Cook’s Eucharistic hostage crisis. In the combox on the post, a number of people got organized and motivated to contact the school to put pressure on the University to bring this situation to an end. As it happened, not long after the phone calls and emails began, the crisis was resolved and the Eucharist thankfully returned.

An unfortunate thing happened at that point. An associate professor at the University of Minnesota, PZ Myers, wrote a disgusting diatribe on a blog called Science Blogs which is ostensibly devoted to science but in reality it is just a meeting ground for foul mouthed and overweening atheists. In one of the early comments on that post, somebody linked to our story on the Cook kerfuffle. We were then inundated with commenters coming from Myers’ post. For several hours we were deleting rude, disrespectful, and abusive comments. We were eventually forced to shut off comments for that post. A first for us.

PZ Myers post, which we will not repeat here, was a disgusting and cowardly threat proffered for one reason only, publicity. Myers’ empty promise of intentional sacrilege — one which he would never tender toward some of the more unforgiving confessions for fear of rapid and radical recompense — was a stunt aimed entirely at self promotion. I suspect that he has been checking his blog statistics every twenty minutes all week with glee for his momentary deliverance from his well deserved obscurity.

PZ Myers presents himself an intellectual warrior in the cause of enlightened atheism. In reality, Myers is nothing more than a crude and craven attention seeking bigot. This is the reason we have not written about Myers before and likely not again. This is also why there are no links to the pusillanimous professor in this post. We do not desire to be complicit in giving Myers what he so desperately desires, attention. The sooner we let his nauseating notoriety come to an end, the better.