In about two hours, at 10AM EST, NPR's On Point radio program is going to spend an hour on Intelligent Design creationism. It's going to have two guests: George Gilder and Richard Dawkins.

I have no idea why the media finds it necessary to pair a smart guy like Dawkins with a flaming moron like Gilder, but there it is. Balance. Knowledge vs. ignorance. Competence vs. incompetence. Signal vs. noise. Half the program will be garbage, while the other half will be a guy incinerating garbage.

First half hour: What? Gilder is arguing that the impossibility of information flowing back from proteins to DNA (Crick's "Central Dogma") and the falsity of the inheritance of acquired characters is evidence against evolution? That's like claiming that because drawing on a computer screen doesn't change the program code, it means that computer programs can't be changed. This whole line of argument about information theory is just obscurantist squinking: information theory does not damage evolutionary theory.

Also, that proteins are the expression of the phenotype and that experience does not change DNA ignores the key insight of Darwin, that evolution is a process that operates on populations, not individuals. The neo-Darwinian synthesis embraced the Weismann barrier; it simply is not a problem.

And good grief, Gilder resurrects the Hitler zombie, trying to discredit evolution because some old supporters also favored Hitler!

Oh, man. He's ending his time by babbling about human intelligence "projecting itself into the universe" and Kurzweil's Singularity. What a kook.

One funny bit: his economic failures were pointed out, and Gilder started muttering about over-regulation being at fault.

Ashbrook recapped the last half hour by calling Gilder a "prominent American thinker". I am so embarrassed.

Dawkins started by pointing out the obvious errors in Gilders thesis: the Central Dogma does not conflict with evolution, information theory is not against us. Then he cut through the BS and and explained that all the talk about "information theory" is just a smokescreen for the old creationist argument that complexity can't evolve, and that increased information can't appear out of nowhere. There's a failure of the imagination there, because they then turn around and invoke an even more complex designer to explain biological complexity—it's an empty solution. Also, any incompleteness of evolution does not justify accepting an alternative 'theory' that explains nothing at all.

When asked about a solution, he recommends education, education, education—I agree, obviously.

Ashbrook brings up atheism, of course. Ho-hum. Dawkins turns that right around and hammers on the stupidity of believing the entire universe was created in the middle stone age.

One caller exemplifies the ignorant viewpoint of creationists, and asks the uninformed question, "how can you get something as complex as a person when even simple things need to be designed?" He tells him to go read a book. Good for him. He also gives a very brief summary of evolutionary history.

And to counter the question of how to reconcile evolution with the religious, he recommends Ken Miller's Finding Darwin's God^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}.

Aaargh! They bring on Michael Ruse after Dawkins!

Fortunately, he's mostly sensible today. He does his usual atheist bashing (we aren't supposed to say that religion is silly, apparently—atheists are acceptable as long as they keep very, very quiet), but at least he clearly explained that ID is nothing but creationism lite. Also fortunately, he wasn't on for long.

Look, guy, the way to get the Christian middle to accept evolution is NOT to pretend that atheists don't exist; they're going to have to reconcile themselves to the fact that atheists are thick on the ground in the sciences someday, and lying to them now won't help.