I'm baffled by Mark A. R. Kleiman's argument. It doesn't make sense.

Second, Genesis implies that each human being I confront is sacred, again merely as a human being and without any reference to his behavior, status, or appearance. He (or she) is sacred as the Image of God. (C.S. Lewis says in one of his essays that, aside from the consecrated wine and wafer, any individual human being that you meet is the most sacred object you will encounter that day, more sacred than any relic or image.)

Nice sentiment. I agree that this is how idealistic Christianity tries to present itself, and that apologists frequently express these kinds of values.

Insofar as middle-school Darwinism asserts that each of us is merely an animal of a particular species, fundamentally like animals of other species, it undercuts both halves of that double-barreled moral proposition. If I'm merely an animal, why shouldn't I act like one if I feel like it? And, if you're merely an animal, why shouldn't I beat you up, if I'm so inclined and bigger than you are?

Wait a minute here. The Christian point of view gets represented by an expression from one of its more gentle and literate proponents (why not "Neca ecos omnes, Deus suos agnoscet"?), while the naturalistic fallacy and a juvenile misappropriation of biology get propped up in evolution's stead? This isn't exactly setting up a fair comparison, unless he's trying to frame both as completely wrong.

But no. He isn't.

The red team is, I am convinced, wrong to think that believing the account of human origins in Genesis is a necessary condition for behaving well. But red-teamers aren't wrong to think of that account as providing a potentially powerful prop to moral behavior, and can't, therefore, justly be faulted as unreasonable or superstitious for objecting to attempts to kick that prop out from under their children, and other children who are their future fellow-citizens.

The blue team shouldn't back off on its insistence that children be taught accurate biology in biology class, but we should acknowledge that the larger argument isn't really about biology, and cut the folks on the other side some slack rather than dismissing them as ignorant rustics.

Now I'm lost. Kleiman seems conscious of the failure of this biblical moral message…

Of course, support for torture is strongest precisely where opposition to the teaching of evolution is most vehement, suggesting that what seems to me the obvious message of Genesis isn't obvious to everyone who reads -- or pretends to read -- the Bible.

…so how can he then turn around and say that Genesis is "providing a potentially powerful prop to moral behavior"? It clearly isn't. It is a historical, empirical, ongoing failure as a moral force for good.

I agree that the debate isn't about biology. The biology has long been settled, and creationism is as dead as phlogiston. If we're going to try and move on to the "larger argument", and do our best to see that our children are raised with wisdom and morality, that means we should be openly criticizing the hypocrisy of all of the world's major religions, we should be saying how god-belief is the cradle of bigotry and intolerance, we should be ripping away the clots of superstition that are choking our childrens' minds. The blue team should be championing freethought. Let's set forth competing values, legitimate values that we actually support with our actions and not just our mouths, ideals based on reason and evidence.

If the other side really isn't made up of "ignorant rustics," they should respect that, right?

I suspect, though, that any forthright opposition to religious dogma would not only set the "ignorant rustics" of the Right to squalling even more furiously, but would have the equally ignorant rustics of the Left squealing craven apologies and rushing to prove their greater piety.

It's all well and good to talk about acknowledging the larger argument, but we know what that larger argument is, and it's easier for most people to avoid it. Biology is merely a proxy right now, a battleground where mealy-mouthed creationists can lie about evidence and nibble at the truth instead of engaging in the real war: Enlightenment vs. Theocracy. Reason vs. Superstition. Mankind vs. Gods.

Here is my latest response to another Kleiman sally.