Thanks, spelling and grammar have never been my strong point. I should qualify that with my speciality is not in the textual side of communication, but the irony still stands: my writing needs work (one reason for starting this blog).

Are you kidding? “to strong”? I hope you meant “too strong”. This is NOT nitpicking. If you’re going to imply literacy as your strong point then please be literate. F*@kin’ A. Credibility should start with literacy.

My actual first impression of Myers was that he’s probably a great teacher, and it makes sense that others have corroborated this above. I think the world needs his brutal honesty. But it needs more than just brutal honesty. What Myers does is not bad, but it’s not enough – well, his response to Scott Adams was pretty bad (see: http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/scott_adams_is_a_wally/ ), I mean he more or less retorted in the exact manner that Adams predicted (making his stance reactionary instead of well-reasoned).

Now Scott Adam’s goal is to frustrate and entertain people, and he seems to be doing quite a good job considering how popular he is. His point of view isn’t entirely sincere, it’s really a water-down provocation wrapped in semi-fact. But he’s got the ability and skill to appeal to a mass-audience in a way that no scientist does. Making people laugh is the first way to get them on your side.

I was raised in a Catholic family, I was required to attend church every sunday till I moved out of the house, and I attended public high school where we learned about evolution: not once in those 18 years did I ever get the impression that these two belief systems were incompatible. In fact I took for granted how much sense evolution makes, and by extension I assumed that the rest of the population did too. I was literally quite surprised by the recent case in Kentucky and everything that’s followed. I think it’s more than just biblical literalism at play.
There is a concerned misinformation effort (apparently coming in waves every so often since the The Origin of Species was published) on the part of Creationists and Intelligent Designers to gather a critical mass against evolution. The people who are susceptible to buying into this are apparently plentiful and will not take kindly to be called stupid or wrong about their world-view.

Raising mass consciousness requires craft and diligence, it takes more PR than empathic reasoning. I shouldn’t have said scientists aren’t good communicators, I should say they aren’t populist communicators. And evolution could use a populist voice. Myers and Richard Dawkins are a start, but I fear they come on to too strong for certain moderate majority.

As someone who does communications for a dayjob this problem has intrigued me for the past couple of weeks – but I must admit there isn’t a clear answer. I mean, posters? Probably not.

Tact and good scientists - and for that matter, even atheism staying quiet and underground - have done nothing good and have let the world get to this point. Maybe being loud about it will actually help. On top of that, P.Z. is actually RIGHT.

Scott Adams, on the other hand, wrote in foreword to that piece of “philosophy”, said “oh, and something in here is deliberately wrong, but I’m not gonna tell you what”. Yeah. I’d rather have PZ as my lecturer, thanks.

Equating him with Eastwood and Wayne? Past laughable and onward to pathological.

I don’t share their crusading approach against religion; and have been critical of both on that matter from time to time; but deep down I think this helps more than it hinders. Some folks may get turned off; but others get invigorated. They are both passionate and get to grips with questions that are of wide interest to lay people, though they cannot be resolved just by empirical scientific methods.

The attempt to talk about science while being careful to avoid saying anything one way or the other on the major metaphysical debates taking place in the wider community is useful for those already motivated to figure out the science for its own sake.

But such people, I suggest, are not the major problem. And the nice conciliatory approach tends to leave many lay people uninterested. Speak up for or against God, however, and you get their attention; especially if it is done tactlessly. Combine it with first rate science and you motivate them to consider the question in that light… and this is all good.

Many people are highly critical of the anti-religious views of Myers and Dawkins. That’s fine: the good thing is that they have been motivated to think on the matter. Even better: a debate motivated by these tactless provocateurs is going to going to be dealing with some first rate science writing.

Clint Eastwood isn’t loved for his tact. John Wayne wasn’t loved for his tact. You don’t win NASCAR races with tact. No coach winning the Super Bowl has ever been commended for tact. Sometimes, as Churchill noted, one must do what is necessary.

And the fact that you say that Dilbert’s approach is better than Pharyngula’s makes this post all the more laughable! PZ Meyers has been a great science blogger for a long, long time, and he is among the most popular of the science bloggers–if not THE most popular. PZ has written informative scientific pieces on everything from evolution to the advantages and disadvantages of having a large penis.

I’m not a scientist myself, and I find PZ’s writing to be very clear, persuasive, and accurate. He is a hell of a lot more credible than Adams in writing about scientific issues! Adams doesn’t even write anything worthwhile at all. At best, he posts ridiculously absurd “thought experiments” that are so thoroughly dumb that he must resort to saying it was all a joke when people call him on his bullcrap. PZ, being a real scientist, unfortunately doesn’t have the luxury of crying out, “It was all a joke, I write comics for a living!” if someone attempts to refute one of his arguments, though.

No, he can “dumb it down” to any level, I assure you. Last year, he spoke to my 10th grade biology class (his daughter is a classmate of mine) and I understood perfectly fine despite my very limited knowledge on the subject. I am in the top portion of my class, but in the discussions that followed it was obvious the vast majority of my classmates understood as well.