“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” -William Shakespeare
In The Grand Canyon is How Old? PZ Myers whines like a little girl that the National Park Service includes in its bookstore The Grand Canyon: A Different View. The book attempts to explain the formation of the Grand Canyon from a young earth creationist point of view. The book isn’t in the science section of the bookstore but rather in the inspirational section.
There are various observations that can be made about why this is so upsetting to an undistinguished (other than by his militant atheism) Associate Professor of Biology at a small state university.
One observation is that he’s afraid his pet theory of life can’t stand up on its own merits against other theories and, not having sufficiently convincing evidentiary merits on his side, calls for censoring any opposing views. PZ Myers is basically showing himself to be a proverbial book burner lifted straight from the pages of the classic science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451.
Another observation is that Myers considers himself infallible in his beliefs and therefore, despite a vast majority of humanity holding a sincere belief that life is something more than a big accident, a cosmic gag reel, his little minority clique of self-annointed intellectual atheist snobs holds The Truth and if you don’t agree then you’re suffering God Delusions or you’re a moron or both. Myers isn’t immune to delusions himself. In this case it appears to be delusions of superiority.
Spare me.