Darwinism and popular culture: Op-ed writer in Canada's National Post doubts Darwin

In 'Darwin? That's just the party line' (National Post, October 31, 2008) , retired Saskatoon-based journalist Wayne Eyre expresses his doubt about the Darwin worship of the new atheist movement and his appreciation for intelligent design theorist Mike Behe

That these gentlemen go on like this in the wake of, for example, biochemist Michael Behe's masterful Darwin's Black Box, in which he sets out a devastating case for the "irreducible complexity" of human systems, truly makes one wonder about the confidence they have in their own convictions.

, mystery academic Mike Gene,

For example, to avoid repercussions for not toeing the line, one biologist (rumoured to be an Ivy League professor) has taken on a pseudonym -- Mike Gene -- even though his book, The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues, neither denies evolution and common ancestry, nor claims to offer proof of intelligent design. He's just one of a number of scholars who cite peer-reviewed research to contend that a wholly random explanation for all of creation is, at best, implausible

and "Darwin skeptic" mathematician David Berlinksi,

And now comes along another tour de force -- David Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion: Atheism And Its Scientific Pretensions -- which, in 225 pages, delivers a formidable blow to the agreed-upon fictions that Darwin's theory and a deity-less cosmos increasingly appear to be.

I first read about The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions in the National Review. Just before his recent death, William F. Buckley found the book to be "everything desirable; it is idiomatic, profound, brilliantly polemical, amusing and of course vastly learned"; and when George Gilder, co-founder of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, declared it "the definitive book of the millennium," I was hooked in to read it.

Wayne, what is the world coming to? Are Canadians actually allowed to doubt Darwin now? But then, come to think of it, the Calgary Herald printed my op-ed, "Albertans are right to reject Darwinian evolution (August 17, 2008), and that rag's in the same stable as the Post.

Perhaps it occurred to someone there that, so long as it is still safe and legal for Canadians to read thoughtful books, many of us know why Darwinism is a crock - and so much the worse for papers where no such arguments may be aired.

This isn't necessarily good news for me, you know. Here in Canada, I had this beat pretty much sewn up for years, and it's been good to me. Now I'll have competition from people who read, write, and think, rather than attacks from threatened ass hats letting off steam. On the other hand, I won't be lonely, so in the end I love it!

See also:

My review of Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution (which I think is even better than Darwin's Black Box).

My summary of George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: