PZ Myers

IHEU's International Humanist Award 2011

Paul Zachary "PZ" Myers (often erroneously spelt Meyers) is a biology professor at University of Minnesota Morris (UMM).

Myers created Pharyngula, a safe-haven for despicable assholes who consider themselves to be human (unless they self-identify as some other species because of an undiagnosed psychological disorder). Pharyngula is well known for its toxicity and opposition to independent thought or new ideas, and is infamous for the willingness of its commenteriat to encourage people whom they do not know a single thing about to commit suicide via a rusty knife, rectal insertion, or self-immolation (to name a few) for disagreeing with them. The fact that, this being the internet, they may be encouraging a 12 year old to kill themselves is completely lost (or irrelevant) to them.

PZ Myers is not only complicit in this uniquely disgusting behavior, but encourages it. He was also tolerated by the online atheist community for a long time (perhaps with the exception of Atheists Ireland) because of the perceived importance of having a gutless asshole who hides behind his keyboard as a representative.

He has since fallen out of favor with the remnants of the online atheist community, largely after he decided to turn his intellectual pea-shooter on his only means of popular support, resulting in his own blog network being deserted by anyone of even the most insignificant intelligence or note and replaced by some random drag queens he found on the street.

Youthful interest

No one really gives a shit.

Science journals

The work of PZ Myers has not been published in any reputable science journals.

Career

In 2011, Prof. Myers was elected chair of the biology department at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Everyone sat on him.

Research

Prof. Myers' likes to speculate in evo-devo, using the zebrafish, Danio rerio, a common aquarium fish. A major part of his research is about the effects of alcohol (CH₃CH₂OH) on embryonic development. He does this research by giving zebrafish embryos big doses of alcohol and then looking for abnormalities.

Outreach

Prof. Myers main outreach tools are his blog, Pharyngula; his teaching at UMM; and talks at conferences and other events, both within and outside the U.S., as well as interviews with news media. Myers wrote a book with the title, "The Happy Atheist", view an abstract. So Alone,

Conferences

• No one invites him anymore because he is a cunt.

Messageboard moderation

Seriously? This is a fucking section? How desperate are you cunts to get PZ's attention?

Beliefs

Blah blah fucking blah, Myers is great I would like to fellate him.

Politics and Ethics

Myers is politically liberal but opposes Libertarians.

Myers believes morality should be based on being kind to other human beings (HAHAHAHA! Did I seriously fucking L.O.L!) and animals, also avoiding harm.

Myers believes Chelsey Manning deserves a medal, Dick Cheney and John Yoo and Karl Rove and George W. Bush should go to jail in Manning's place.

Myers won't vote for the Republican party in 2016 (probably not any other time either).

“	the platform committee endorsed constructing a wall along the U.S./Mexico border, just like Trump wants – the committee changed “illegal immigrants” to “illegal aliens” in the text – the committee refused an amendment that would have pushed for a restriction of magazine capacity in firearms – they approved an amendment that would make it legal for parents to force their LGBT children to go through conversion therapy – Children raised in “traditional” homes are “healthier.” “Children raised in a traditional two-parent household tend to be physically and emotionally healthier, less likely to use drugs and alcohol, engage in crime, or become pregnant outside of marriage,” the platform reads. – Education includes “a good understanding of the Bible.” – Coal is a “clean” form of energy	”
—PZ Myers quoting Lynna

“	This is the goddamned easiest election decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.	”
—Myers himself

The Bible

Myers agrees with Robert G Ingersol that the Bible is an evil book, encouraging slavery, people were imprisoned, tortured and killed families set apart from each other due to the Bible's influence. Credulity was encouraged.

Roman Catholicism

Myers believes the host used in the Eucharist is just a cracker desecrated one when he felt Roman Catholics overreacted to a student who took a wafer out of mass without eating it. See Crackergate for the lurid details!

Myers thinks girls as well as men should go to college. Training the minds of young people is more important than young people marrying early and pushing out babies early despite what some Roman Catholics advocate.

Myers is strongly critical of Totino-Grace Roman Catholic high school because they fired one teacher and forced their president to resign just because both admitted to being in long term gay relationships. Myers also has quite a lot to say about Roman Catholic child abuse.

Myers thinks Pope Francis is overrated.

Academia

At Yale University a male research student, Polloneal Jymmiel Ocbina allegedly was caught on camera sabotaging the experiments of a woman student, Magdalena Koziol by poisoning her experimental fishes. The alleged perpetrator left but also after this it is alleged her boss, Antonio Giraldez became unsupportive, ensured her time in the laboratories was extremely stressful and threatened to destroy her career if she talked about the incident. PZ believes Ocbina should have faced criminal charges for harming the fish as well. Law suits are in progress and we may find out more if the case comes to court.

Feminism

Myers is strongly critical of misogyny, lack of respect for women and sexual harassment. He published Carrie Poppy who complained about problems she experienced working at the James Randi Educational Foundation, a day later Myers published rape allegations made against Michael Shermer and harassment allegations against Ben Radford. He has also published other complaints women made about misogyny in the atheist movement. He also fears there is denialism over the issue and believes only far reaching change can rescue the movement. Myers linked to many other websites where women complained about harassment in the skeptical movement and feels radical change is needed to preserve the movement. Myers hopes his supporters on Pharyngula will "pick a side" and fight those who harass women. . See Misogyny Wars for more. PZ gets into trouble for all this.

“	I had Conservapædia raving about how fat I was, whole blogs dedicated to how stupid I was, and of course, frequent accusations of being gay — but once I got associated with feminism, the hatred reached a whole new level of shrieking. I’ve basically been declared an honorary woman by a whole new category of people, online atheists, who turn out to be worse than creationists, Christians, and Muslims. There are even more rants about my appearance, my ‘irrationality’, my sanity, than ever before. And the scary thing is that when I compare what I get to what women activists get, I’m getting off easy.	”
—PZ Myers

Myers thinks the International Congress of Quantum Chemistry are sexist because they do not have women members or invite women speakers though there are plenty of qualified women quantum chemists.

Myers has written a great deal about the trouble between Ben Radford and Karen Stollznow as have several other Pharyngulites.

Myers is concerned about the deepening rift in the atheist movement and mentions particularly online harassment of Melody Hensley.

Myers believes the preponderance of men in some science fields is culturally based and has evidence to back this up.

Integrity

Myers tolerates his commenteriat demanding suicide from those who disagree with him.

Trivia

Tentacles and hats

Rumors exist that Myers has no testicles, other than those of the internet variety. Indeed, Myers encourages such rumors with illustrations of himself as a faggot.

Hypothermia

Myers reportedly froze to death (if only this were true!) during the cold Minnesota winter in January 2013. See Sorry, guys. I stepped outside this morning and froze to death. He should have heeded, "Cold weather can be really dangerous. You can die." Still Pharyngula continues after PZ marvelously indeed rose from the dead.

This is meant lightheartedly but neatly illustrates Occam's Razor. Which is more likely?

1. PZ really died, his Ghost told us about it.
2. PZ really died, rose from the dead and told us about it.
3. The original authors of this page are so desperate to feel superior to everyone else that they construct arguments in their head and then pretend there are other people making those arguments so they can refute them on a Wiki so badly moderated than I can write this.

See also

• Notable PZ Quotes

External links

• "PZ Myers PZ Myers from Atheism Wiki
• PZ Myers PZ Myers from Liberapedia
• PZ Myers RationalWiki on PZ Myers