The Discovery Institute re-appears in the pages of First Things

NO, NO, NO, NO!! I DO NOT WANT TO WADE THROUGH ANY MORE OF THE DISCOVERY INSTITUTE'S DISHONEST TRIPE! FROM MAST TO KEEL, STEM TO STERN, AND PORT TO STARBOARD, IT HAS ALL BEEN HOLED AND SUNK A HUNDRED TIMES OVER! THIS CREATIONIST CODSWALLOP IS NOT, NOT, NOT SCIENCE!

I mean, like, come on, already! After the birching the judge gave the creationist school board members in the Kitzmiller case, you'd think that someone with the capability to process information would wise up by now. But no, here is Father Neuhaus, bless the old warrior for the faith, giving a megaphone to the Discovery Institute's invincibly uneducable John G. West.

Evolution is a fact. It would still be a fact even if creationist bogeymen like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett had never existed. As I always like to say, to believe in things that can't be proved is faith; but to disbelieve in things that have been proved is just obstinance. And really, the dishonesty of creationists in misrepresenting the scientific consensus on evolution ill commends their religious witness.

I wish the editors of First Things would just drop this turkey of an "issue". Railing against evolution is just another way of vainly trying to build a better yesterday, trying to get back to the supposed spiritual harmonies of the Middle Ages. Well, if you could reach back into the 13th Century and pluck somebody out at random, you'd be very unlikely to reel in a Thomas Aquinas, a Roger Bacon, a Dante, or a Francis of Assisi. You'd most likely get an illiterate peasant, nasty and brutish. And that peasant would be my medieval counterpart--not Aquinas, Bacon, or any of the rest of the luminaries of the age. I wouldn't want to trade, or go back. So please: don't go trying to discredit modern science for my spiritual betterment.