A talk with P.Z. Myers
University of Minnesota (Morris) associate biology professor and raconteur P.Z. Myers makes a prominent appearance in the new documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. In a sequence intended to demonstrate an anti-religious agenda amongst opponents of the Intelligent Design movement, Myers likens religion to knitting. “What we have to do is get it to a place where religion is treated at the level it should be treated,” he tells his interviewer. “It’s something fun that people get together to do on the weekends and really doesn’t affect their life as much as it has been so far.”
Whether he deliberately set out to become the focus of the ire that the clip is likely to produce amongst Christian audiences, he certainly isn’t known for being shy and retiring. When he disrupted a private telephone press conference with Expelled‘s star and producers to level charges of deception and lying on March 28, journalists were in shock. There he was, on the speakerphone, living up to the very image portrayed in the film.
Before he checked out of the press conference (after three or four minutes of mutually confused banter), he offered journalists who were listening in the opportunity to contact him directly to hear his side of the story. Past the Popcorn Managing Editor took him up on that invitation, and had a very pleasant twenty-minute conversation with him.
What follows is a full transcript of the part of that conversation that touched on Myers’ feelings about religion, and what he thinks Christians should be paying attention to.
