The National Review weighs in on the Kitzmiller decision, going for their usual simplistic black & white dichotomizing. David Klinghoffer thinks the choice is God or Darwin. The split is between god-hating atheistic evilutionists (apparently, Judge Jones must be in that group, but I don't know anything about his religious beliefs) and good Jesus-loving Christian creationists, with no conscionable position in between.

To support his claim, he trots out a parade of the wicked: Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, Paul Mirecki, and…PZ Myers. Ooo-whee, I find myself in august company!

He's exactly right about one thing: all the people on his little enemies list say terrible things about religion. Speaking for just myself, I don't like it at all—I think it's a bad idea to afflict a society with an institution dedicated to opposing critical thinking, the acceptance of dogma, and belief in unsupported and frankly, ludicrous claims. I'm going to express my detestation often and without reservation here, as the others in that list have done in their own venues. So? Is this an opinion we are not allowed to have? Does it make us unfit to speak on science or philosophy? Is it more offensive than the frequently stated and rarely questioned Christian opinion that we unbelievers are damned to spend all of eternity suffering in agonizing torment? (I suspect that most sensible Christians respond to us saying "piffle on religion" with a weary "eh" and perhaps a little eye-rolling, just as most sensible atheists find the flaming ghost-life threats weird and ineffectual.)

I suppose some atheists do fall into the trap of reciting rote dogma from the Book of O'Hair, although I've never met any; I know there are smart Christians who think sharply and insightfully, and only suspend their critical faculties when it comes to matters of faith—I just figure going to church is like reading a fantasy novel, a vice I indulge in now and then, and it doesn't have to mean their mind is necessarily rotting, except in those pathological cases where people are unable to separate reality from their religion or their favorite fantasy world…unfortunately, we do have a lot of them running about.

So, is faith a useful marker for distinguishing people who do not believe in evolution, and those who accept the scientific evidence? No. Most religious beliefs are irrelevant to the creation-evolution argument.

Many (about half, by some polls) scientists have accommodated their religious beliefs to their scientific ideas, rather than simply rejecting them. This is exactly as it should be, since religions that contradict the evidence of the world around them are going to have major difficulties advancing in any material sense. Klinghoffer confuses metaphysical naturalism with methodological naturalism in his little essay, leading to all of the usual logical offenses of creationists.

In fact, both Darwin and design have metaphysical implications and are expressions of a certain kind of faith. ID theorists are not willing to submit to the assumption that material stuff is the only reality. Darwinism takes the opposite view, materialism, which assumes there can never be a supernatural reality.

(I have to mention this again. Calling modern evolutionary biology "Darwinism" is idiotic. It's hard to read this stuff without assuming, usually correctly, that the writer is a clueless ignoramus.)

Let's clear this up and resolve all of Klinghoffer's contradictions, OK? Science practices methodological materialism or naturalism. We test material explanations of the world because that's all we can do—we don't have a supernatural toolkit. Christians can practice methodological materialism all they want without damning themselves to hell. Even non-scientists do this all the time, when, for instance, they thump a melon at the grocery store to see if it's ripe, rather than praying to god to send them a sign. Christians who are scientists can also sequence a zebrafish gene and compare it to a human sequence in GenBank without committing blasphemy. Unless, that is, they happen to belong to some weird brain-dead sectish form of Christianity, I suppose.

Meanwhile, completely independent of our ideas about evolution, some of us practice metaphysical naturalism. We conclude that there is no supernatural being because we see no reasonable evidence for it, and because many of the claims of fans of the supernatural are contradictory and a bit loony. However, this idea does not come into play when we're thumping melons or comparing genes either. Atheism and theism are properties completely orthogonal to anyone's ability to carry out the methods of science.

The Intelligent Design creationists are deliberately conflating two separate issues.

The chief counsel for the Thomas More Law Center implies that all evolution supporters are atheists.

"What this really looks like is an ad hominem attack on scientists who happen to believe in God," Thompson said of Jones’ ruling. Thompson is a former Oakland County prosecutor.

We atheists have standards, I'll have you know. Just being pro-science is not enough to join our ranks. Ken Miller, for instance, testified for the evolution side in the trial, and he believes in some sky fairy. That makes Thompson wrong.

On MSNBC News, they announced this:

In a major clash between faith and evolution, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled against intelligent design Tuesday, saying it should not be taught in the classroom.

Stuff and nonsense. There's nothing in the ruling that represents a clash between faith and evolution. Nothing was resolved against faith, much as we atheists might wish for a ruling that would get religion completely out of the government and public life. Nobody is going to be prevented from going to church or worshipping any god or gods they want by this decision. Judge Jones went out of his way to clearly state that there is nothing in the teaching of evolutionary biology that should conflict with anyone's preferred faith.

Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

Now here's a strange situation. I'm a flaming, uncompromising, damned heretical atheist, with a brutally unkind attitude towards religion, as many have noted. Yet here I am, saying that science and faith have nothing to do with each other, that this hypothetical, mythical god is something supernatural, unreachable by the toolkit of methodological naturalism, and that there are no empirical tests that can decide its existence yay or nay.

I hate to say it, but that makes me a "friend to faith" (not by intent or desire, though, but only as a consequence of adherence to principle), much more so than the conservative Christian who pins his belief in god to whether some microscopic collection of proteins in bacteria proliferating in his bowel evolved by natural means or not.

Klinghoffer doesn't understand that principle at all. He seems discombobulated by the complexity of a Christian professing his confidence in science.

Some advocates go further, seeing Darwin as a friend to faith. When I was in New York recently I spent an enjoyable hour at the new Darwin show at the American Museum of Natural History. In the last few yards of exhibit space, before you hit the inevitable gift shop, the museum addresses intelligent design. There's a short film with scientists talking about Darwin and religion, seeking to show that Darwinism actually has religion's best interests in mind. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome project and a self-identified Christian, says that ID can "potentially [do] great harm to people's faiths." How so? Says Collins: by "putting God in the gaps"—by discovering God's creative powers at the junctures in life's history that science can't so far explain. When science at last finds mechanistic explanations for every presumed miracle, where will that leave God?

Smart people see the Christian Francis Collins doing world-class science, and they realize that hey, studying the world around us doesn't conflict with their beliefs in things not of this world. Klinghoffer sees Francis Collins undermining his preconceptions about who can do science, and he thinks that "makes Collins a funny kind of Christian."

That's interesting. Klinghoffer thinks only his narrow interpretation of what Christians should think can define what a Christian is: if you believe in god but don't think he actively and directly conjured up blood clotting proteins, then you must be a "funny kind of Christian". If you want to raise up a child in the church, then by Klinghoffer's strange rules, the scientific professions are all closed off to that kid; if she were to close one of the gaps in our knowledge, she would be shutting out god.

Yet I, who deny all those things, am the threat.

I suppose Klinghoffer, who seems terribly divorced from reality, can think that, but it doesn't make it so. There is a simpler explanation. Many creationists are just stupid people and believe wrong things. It's the only way I can explain this odd and erroneous delusion about how atheists think.

And this, I think, is why some Darwin advocates dislike religion. It's why they fight it with such passion: Because negating religion is the reason behind their belief system. To their credit, they recognize a truth that others prefer not to see. That is: One may choose Darwin or one may choose God.

That's not a truth, and I don't recognize it. One can choose both. I don't think I'm unusual among atheists, either—we tend to bow to the evidence, and it's awfully hard to deny that there are theists doing science, directly contradicting Klinghoffer's claim. Maybe he received some supernatural message that denies the reality of what we see and hear?

I do dislike religion, and I do advocate for evolution, but I'd feel the same way even if I found Jesus, probably. Although the only way I'd find Jesus is if I experienced massive brain damage, so that's not entirely certain. And I have to concede that maybe if I did have some major cranial trauma, I'd think just like David Klinghoffer.

(There's another take on this article at What Culture War?)