FAITH. No one word personifies the absolute worst and most wicked properties of religion better than that. Faith is mind-rot. Itโs the poison that destroys critical thinking, undermines evidence, and leads people into lives dedicated to absurdity. Itโs a parasite regarded as a virtue. I speak as a representative of the scientific faction of atheism: itโs one thing we simply cannot compromise on. Faith is wrong.
PZ MyersPlantinga has written a short, 5 page summary of his views on evolution and naturalism, and itโs lucid (for Plantinga) and goes straight to his main points. The workings of the man's mind sit there naked and exposed, and all the stripped gears and misaligned cogs and broken engines of his misperception are there for easy examination. Read it, and you'll wonder how a man so confused could have acquired such a high reputation; you might even think that philosophy has been Sokaled.
PZ MyersReligion is an act of sedition against reason. Whatever religion is most seductive and likely to draw in victims to surrender their skepticism is the worst.
PZ MyersWe godless lack that certainty, and we know the world is a complex place that requires compromise and is not ruled by a moral force - virtue is subject to negotiation, and is found in working together with others to find mutually satisfactory solutions. Good is not absolute, it is an emergent property that arises from successful networks of individuals. It is also something that is measured by evidence: we look at the good that people do, not the promises that they make and never keep, or the lies that dovetail nicely into dogma. Competence is a virtue. Intent is meaningless without action.
PZ Myers