The wedge of unintelligent polemics

Back in 2006, I decided to take a charitable approach to our wayward creationist fellow citizens. Here is the result (although this is a somewhat revised version from 2012).

I'm not a creationist, and since this book is an exposure of "Intelligent Design" creationism, I'm presumably supposed to like it. I don't. In fact, I was somewhat shocked reading it. The book is both hysterical, nasty and mean. It won't convince any creationist. Perhaps it's not supposed to?

The book constantly quotes a supposed "secret document" revealing that the Intelligent Design movement wants to re-Christianize America in three phases. But this is not a secret at all. In fact, the leaders of the ID movement have explicitly stated their goals in public many times, for instance in the books by Phillip E. Johnson. By referring to a "secret" document, the authors of this book want to give the impression that creationism is some kind of underground conspiracy. If only!

Even worse, Forrest and Gross claims that the ID movement grew out of "the personal divorce crisis of Phillip E. Johnson". Frankly, this is really low. It's unserious in other ways, too. The ID movement is a successful political and social phenomenon. Such things don't come into being simply due to the personal idiosyncracies of one man.

Another problem with this book, is that it constantly attacks the creationists for not having published anything in peer-reviewed journals. Of course they haven't. They're being censored! Presumably, the authors mean that creationists are stopped from publishing in scientific journals because they aren't scientific. But Forrest and Gross frame their argument in a bureaucratic-institutional manner, where the very fact that you belong to the "in-group" somehow guarantees your scientific character. That is naive at best.

Finally, I note that Forrest and Gross claim that only evolutionary biologists can properly understand the evidence for evolution. But the authors are not evolutionary biologists themselves. Should we simply take their word on faith? A strange suggestion, coming from two opponents of fundamentalist religion... One wonders what on earth Richard Dawkins have been doing all this time, as professor of public understanding of science, if only a small elite can "properly" understand the evidence for the greatest show on earth!

If the ID movement, or fundamentalist Christians in general, decide to use this book to expose "the secular humanist agenda", they might very well succeed. Indeed, had I been a holy roller, I would immidiately order 1000 copies, and hand them out for free on revivalist meetings.

By all means, buy this book too if you like, but please don't let it frame your arguments. Only one star out of five!