PZ Myers is a pretty sad case. If you ever look him up on youtube you’d find videos of him giving lectures on science/evolution/atheism/etc vs religion/creationism/etc or hanging out with people like Dawkins. All those videos are usually tagged as 4 years old or more.
These days he couldn’t be invited to anything his friends have ties into and other atheists freely bash the guy. The guy deserves it indeed for all the incredibly stupid things he’s said while also advocating for censorship and demonizing people who disagree with his politics but it’s still sad to know he’s actually gotten so far up only to fall so far down.
One story about him is that he and Dawkins went to see that shitty Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed documentary. The one that promoted “intelligent design” and insisted it’s totes not creationism while making all the same creationist arguments and so on. While in line, apparently he was told that he wasn’t allowed in the theater and was escorted away. Myers wasn’t allowed in yet somehow Dawkins slipped past everyone’s notice.
Now I don’t think it’s possible for something like that to happen. Dawkins probably wouldn’t want to see him being so far on opposite ends on issues like safe spaces and trigger warnings and even Myers’ unwilling to speak to people who aren’t on total opposite ends of issues but disagree on key points or whatnot. I don’t think anyone would recognize him these days or care that much if he’s here or there. He no longer has any sway over atheists or skeptics (which he publicly divorced himself from the skeptical community for being...skeptical)
And the saddest part is that he gave it all up himself. He wasn’t tossed away by atheists, he burned the bridges himself by supporting an intentionally exclusive sect of atheism that sought to dehumanize anyone who wasn’t a part of it and then continue to post outright lies, refuse any sort of debate on the matter, and dig deeper and deeper into the whole of censorship we now call social justice.
It seems a lot of atheists are now going opposite of where PZ wanted everyone to go. Mentioned before were the likes of Dawkins but other people who have spoken out against SJWism include Sam Harris, Thunderf00t, etc and those are people more known for being atheists than anti SJWs. The vice versa would extend the list to people like Sargon of Akkad (Youtube), MundaneMatt, Sh0eonhead, Justicar etc.
Those are people whose videos reach out to thousands and sometimes millions of others. They certainly have more sway than Myers. A livestream between Thunderfoot, Justicar, and the Internet Aristocrat on atheism plus had more people tuning in than the Atheism+ forums during any time of its inception.
More and more people are coming about against the very things Myers has burned every bridge to become apart of. There are exceptions. Some atheists are SJWs and I won’t for a second claim that atheism is inherently against SJWs as what Myers and Steve Shives doesn’t understand: atheism doesn’t have any stance of any issue unrelated to “Do you believe in God/s?”
However, just as there’s atheist SJWs there’s also Jewish ones and Christian ones and there’s probably even Muslim ones. The whole goal of atheism plus trying to make atheism as interlinked with SJWism, something that any theist can easily subscribe to is absurd. It’s like trying to make evolution an inherent aspect of Christianity or atomic theory an official stance of Libertarianism.
I guess he doesn’t have to worry too much about that. Whenever the name PZ Myers comes up, very few are worried that they might be exposed to atheism but instead brace for more SJWism.
I certainly hope defending the likes of Rebecca Watson while demonizing the likes of Elon Musk or Richard Dawkins was worth it because there’s no way from there but down.
Anyways, just some ramblings that crossed my mind while watching videos of people reacting to the guy