Jerry Coyne On Ann Coulter And Intelligent Design

Jerry Coyne wrote a much-noted piece in The New Republic last year, giving a point-by-point debunking of ID. Since then, Ann Coulter has come out with her latest book, Godless, large swathes of which are devoted to pushing ID. Dr. Coyne wearily hoists his sword of reason once again, and chops off more of the hydra's heads. And he doesn't take kindly to Coulter's slander of scientists, either.

As for biologists' supposed agenda of godlessness -- how ridiculous! Yes, a lot of scientists are atheists, but most have better things to do than deliberately destroy people's faith. This goes doubly for the many scientists -- roughly a third of them -- who are religious. After all, one of the most vocal (and effective) opponents of ID is Ken Miller of Brown University, a devout Catholic.

Of course, people who were never reasoned into an opinion can't be reasoned out of it. But you've gotta hope that the mere force of repetition of the facts will seep into some otherwise sensible skulls out there.

Via Arts & Letters Daily.