If We Champion Science, Must We Oppose Faith?

"Recently at the 30th anniversary conference of the Council for Secular Humanism in Los Angeles, leading science blogger PZ Myers and Point of Inquiry host Chris Mooney appeared together on a panel to discuss the questions, How should secular humanists respond to science and religion? If we champion science, must we oppose faith? How best to approach flashpoints like evolution education?"

The next day, the three reprised their public debate for a special episode of Point of Inquiry. <--This is the unedited cut of that three way conversation.

Chris Mooney is a 2009-2010 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and the author of three books, The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America.

PZ Myers is a biologist at the University of Minnesota-Morris who, in addition to his duties as a teacher of biology and especially of development and evolution. Also, the author of Pharyngula, the most heavily-trafficked science blog online.

Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of award-winning books of philosophy, history, and poetry, including: Doubt: A History (HarperCollins, 2003); The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism and Anthropology (Columbia University Press, 2003); and The Happiness Myth, (HarperCollins in 2007). Her work appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. Hecht earned her Ph.D. in History from Columbia University in 1995 and now teaches in the graduate writing program of The New School University.

This is my response to that discussion