Michael Ruse has an interview in Salon, prompted by the publication of his new book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle ^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}. The interview does not motivate me to bother with his book at all. He says some sensible things, and then he goes off the deep end and says some ridiculous things. Like this:

The most interesting thing that the creationists are doing is pointing, as Matthew says, at the beams in the eyes of the evolutionists. Meaning that we all too often get into evolutionism and link up our evolutionary positions with social prescriptions and with atheism.

I'm all in favor of social prescriptions, and I'm not knocking anybody for being an atheist. I call myself a skeptic, but that's a hell of a lot closer to atheism than it is to Christianity. But I want to see what grounds you have for saying that, and whether or not your positions follow from one another. If they do, maybe you should ask yourself, "Am I not being a hypocrite in teaching evolutionary biology in American schools?" Given the fact that it's clearly illegal. You're not allowed to teach religion in biology class.

I can't understand why I can't get through people's thick skulls on this one. If in fact Darwinian evolutionary theory implies atheism, then you ought not to be teaching it in schools! It's not good enough to say, "Well, I'm a National Socialist. But the fact that that meant a lot of Jews were hauled off to Auschwitz, that's not my worry!" It bloody is! If your theory leads to 6 million Jews being made into soap, not only is there something deeply troubling about your theory, but you've got a moral obligation to face up to its implications. If this theory leads to atheism, then it's got religious implications.

I know why he can't "get through people's thick skulls"—it's because he's wrong.

I consider myself an evolutionist and a strong atheist, but that doesn't mean I think teaching evolution is a way to proselytize for atheism; science describes how the world works, and says nothing about whether supernatural beings do or do not exist. Personally, it's the absolute lack of evidence for gods that is sufficient to make gods uninteresting to me, not the fact that fruit flies have Hox genes…and quite a few people agree that natural phenomena like common descent and natural selection do not contradict their ideas of how gods might work. Ruse is flailing against a straw man here.

The idea that teaching evolution is a violation of church and state is playing right into the creationist's hands. When I teach about Hardy-Weinberg equilibria, am I promoting my religion? Is p²+2pq+q²=1 a heresy for someone? Are geologists who teach that the world is round or mathematicians who think pi=3.1416 preaching religious dogma? I suspect that most of my students are Christian, and I suspect that most emerge from my classes with their faith completely unchallenged and unchanged…of course, I can only suspect that, though, because I never even ask what religion they follow. I just don't care.

Where Ruse really goes off the rails, though, is that last paragraph. If he won't knock anyone for being an atheist, why is he making such a blatant comparison between Jew-burning Nazis and atheists? He certainly is implying that atheism is going to lead to genocide, and that by training people in evolutionary biology we're producing the next generation of murderers. That's pretty damn offensive and ignorant, if you ask me. It's pure creationist argument from false consequences. And just to top off the insult, look at this comment from a little later in the interview:

I see the sacrifices they make. William Dembski [the mathematician and philosopher who is among the I.D. movement's intellectual stars] is a very bright guy who should have been able to get a very good job, and he's reduced to going off to some theological tinpot college in Tennessee or something [actually, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.]. Paul Nelson hasn't got a regular job. They're making sacrifices for their faith. While I think their position is terrible, I don't see them as evil people. I don't see them as Hitlers. They're caught up in an appalling, idiosyncratic American religion. So they're not the first.

So, ummm, the creationists who are corrupting our education system and destroying the sciences in America are not Hitlers, but the evolutionists are. Thanks, Dr Ruse. You're a big help.

I don't think Dembski or Nelson are little Hitlers, either (Dobson, on the other hand, is a wanna-be). Nelson is a nice human being, and although I've never met Dembski, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he can be personable, too. That doesn't matter; if being a good person qualified you for prestigious jobs, then Mr Rogers would have been president of the US. Oh, and Hitler loved dogs. Who cares? It's their wrong-headedness and ignorance of biology that disqualifies them from respectable positions, not their religion.