"Militant Atheists are Wrong." So says LA Times columnist Lee Siegel. Although I could quibble with some of his points, this paragraph seems particularly on-target:

Voltaire and his colleagues attacked the dominant values of their day, at great risk to themselves. By almost comical contrast, the new anti-religionists are safely needling the dominant liberal culture's favorite bete noire. They are publishing their books in an atmosphere of complacency and self-congratulation; they preach to the secular converted, who are buying the books in droves. I'm not a particularly religious person. These arguments don't offend me or my beliefs. But they make me concerned nevertheless, because I think they strike a blow against something more important (at least to me) than belief in God. In their contempt for any belief that cannot be scientifically or empirically proved, the anti-God books are attacking our inborn capacity to create value and meaning for ourselves.

Read the whole thing.

The Daily Mail gets into it.

Europeans can't seem to get worked up about radical Islam, but they sure can get their bowels in an uproar about creationism.

Josh Rosenau is having more fun with the Discovery Institute.

Professor Michael Reiss of London University's Institute for Education thinks that creationism should be taught in public schools. He takes a unique approach:

In a book published yesterday which collates the views of various academics about the controversy, he argues: "I am not convinced that something being 'non-scientific' is sufficient to disqualify it from being considered in a science lesson."

I have long thought that if YECs really thought long and hard about it, having their ideas about the creation of the earth and Noah's flood would be the last thing they would want taught in public schools in science class. It would open them up to rigorous evaluation, which would expose them for the pseudoscience that they are. Given that the public schools are already hostile to Christian teaching (of any kind, it seems), this would have a disastrous effect.

The makers of Expelled fight back.

"I've never seen a bigger bunch of hypocrites in my life," said [Mark] Mathis, who set up the interviews for EXPELLED. "I went over all of the questions with these folks before the interviews and I e-mailed the questions to many of them days in advance. The lady (and gentleman) doth protest too much, methinks."

I will be curious to see it.

Winning over the masses, one scientist at a time, Hillary Clinton backs the teaching of evolution in schools in an NYT article somewhere on their site. Too bad the rest of her is so scary.

European parliamentarians demonstrating that, while they might know creationism when they see it, have no idea what "human rights" are.

Troy Patterson over at Slate is even less kind toward the show:

Our cavemen are diligent upper-middle-class consumers. Note the mentions of cognac and panini presses and caramel biscotti, and check out the scene on the squash court, and then wonder what is up at ABC. One suspects that Cavemen will be gone from the schedule soon enough, but how long will the network's zany experiments in packaging yuppie-male anxiety grind on?

The show does seem to be in keeping with Hollywood's generally jaded view of men.

A bad review for ABC's Caveman, even if you don't buy the racial complaints.

The October issue of First Things has an article called "God and Evolution" by Avery Cardinal Dulles, in which he addresses the different theoretical constructs commonly known as atheistic naturalism, theistic evolution and Intelligent Design. Although he is somewhat sympathetic to the notions of I D supporter Michael Behe's "irreducible complexity," he notes the same thing that Kenneth Miller notes:

As a matter of policy, it is imprudent to build one’s case for faith on what science has not yet explained, because tomorrow it may be able to explain what it cannot explain today. History teaches us that the “God of the gaps” often proves to be an illusion.

He also has a wonder rejoinder for people like Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, who think that religious belief is a human construct that has "evolved" over time:

Some evolutionists contend that morality and religion arise, evolve, and persist according to Darwinian principles. Religion, they say, has survival value for individuals and communities. But this alleged survival value, even if it be real, tells us nothing about the truth or falsity of any moral or religious system. Since questions of this higher order cannot be answered by science, philosophy and theology still have an essential role to play.

It is a good article.

Josh Rosenau asks "Is it a lie if you ought to know better, but don't?"

Eric Cline of the Boston Globe states that Biblical archaeology is too important to leave to the "enthusiast" crowd. His is a pretty good run-down of recent "discoveries" that turn out to be nothing of the sort. I don't remember who said it but one of my favorite quotes is "there is enough wood from the original cross of Jesus lying around to build an ark." Cline notes:

Biblical archaeologists are suddenly finding themselves in a position similar to the evolutionary biologists fighting intelligent design - an entire parallel version of their field is being driven by religious belief, not research principles. The biologists' situation makes the risk clear - they did not deign to mount a public refutation of the "science" of intelligent design for years, until it was almost too late, and thus anti-evolutionary science began making its way into the public schools.

The problem seems to be lack of engagement:

When most archaeologists and biblical scholars hear that someone has (yet again) discovered Noah's Ark, they roll their eyes and get on with their business. This can leave the impression that the report might be true.

The problem is, as John Derbeyshire noted in reference to evolution, debating these "reports" is like playing whack-a-mole. Read the whole thing.

Reason Online takes aim at Ben Stein for the recent ID film dust-up. While it appears that Ben Stein has bought into the nonsense that evolutionary theory leads to racism, violence and the possibility of the Cubs winning the World Series, Ron Bailey's argument is largely unpersuasive.

Neandertals as far east as China? That is what a new study is suggesting. eNews reports :

Geneticist Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and colleagues compared mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from bones found from two sites -- one in Teshik Tash, Uzbekistan and the other from the Altai Mountains in Siberia -- with those of specimens from different European sites.

Scientists looking at the morphology of the remains from the central Asian sites have long disagreed as to whether they came from Neanderthals or Homo sapiens sapiens, the species name for modern man. Paabo's results settle the debate. The study, published in the British journal Nature, confirms that the adult fossils -- about 40,000 years old -- from Okladnikov Cave in Siberia genetically match the European Neanderthal.

The thought then, is that if they got to Siberia, they most likely got further south, into China.

Richard Dawkins has apparently gotten snookered into appearing in a pro-ID film. The film, fronted by Ben Stein, actor (Bueller, Bueller...) and game show host (Win Ben Stein's Money), is called Expelled, and chronicles the academic mistreatment of professors who side with ID. Dawkins and others claim that they were only told that the film would be about the the confluence of science and religion. The film was originally to be called Crossroads. According to the article:

Stein denied in the New York Times that he had misled anyone. "I don't remember a single person asking me what the movie was about," he said. The film company said the movie's title was changed on the advice of marketing experts.

There is also a New York Times article on the controversy. You can go there to find it if you really want to.

Republican candidate for governor in the state of Louisiana Bobby Jindal, who many conservatives have pinned their hopes on in the region, has put his apples in the ID cart. No way to know how this will play out.

Mysterious hominids in southwest Florida. At least David Shealy thinks so.

Mark Graham, of Grove College in Pennsylvania says that there was another side of Charles Darwin:

More than a century after his death, people are still trying to understand Charles Darwin. And a new report says those who label him anti-religion are wrong. The 19th Century English biologist famous for his theory of evolution supported Christian missionary work his entire adult life, reports a cultural historian.

The USAToday article is not particularly long but interesting.

Off Topic

The family and I just got back from vacation to Virginia Beach and Washington D.C. where the kids whethered the heat and the walking around the mall quite well. I also got a chance to see these guys, perhaps one last time. A fantastic concert--Genesis played for two and half hours straight without an intermission. I hope I do that well at age 55.