[general_re]

Well, welcome aboard, anyway - with a few exceptions, we rarely get the author himself popping up to defend his own work ;)

In my experience, atheism and evolutionary theory are two sides of the same coin, at least in the mind of the average Joe.

Pauline Kael didn't know anyone who voted for Nixon, either. Given that the most recent Gallup polls on the subject suggest that a large swath of the general population finds the theory of evolution to be compatible with a belief in God, perhaps you simply need to get out more often. And even for those who do find atheism and evolution inseparable, they will hardly be helped by articles that effectively serve to gloss over that very issue by essentially affirming that atheism and evolution are one and the same. I don't believe that, and neither do millions more, your experience notwithstanding.

Although evolutionary theory is, as you rightly point out, a descriptive and not prescriptive theory, “Darwinism” has been embraced as an entire worldview by those whose prior philosophic assumptions exclude any idea of a God (see Robert Wright).

The same Robert Wright who wrote "Indeed, the Darwinian account of our creation...is not only compatible with a higher purpose but vaguely suggestive of one"?

Nevertheless, there are those who do as you say - Richard Dawkins is one. He would have you believe that evolution and God are incompatible, so God has to go. And here in this article I am apparently presented with the same claim - evolution and God are incompatible, but this time, evolution has to go. The assessments of Richard Dawkins and Paul Dernavich are, as nearly as I can tell, identical, differing only insofar as the proposed remedies to the dichotomy are concerned - entertaining the idea that it may be a false dichotomy is apparently not on either menu today...

[PDerna]

I have to humbly accept my spanking, as you have corrected me on both counts. I need to go sit in the corner, but not the same corner that contains my computer - obviously the oxygen was getting thin over there.

So on point #1, you are right - the process of evolution is not at all incompatible with the idea of God or creationism. I was never intentionally trying to say that they were mutually exclusive.

And on #2, of course it is Richard Dawkins and not Robert Wright. Dawkins was the one who claimed that he was an atheist from Day 1, and that the Darwinian theory of evolution merely gave him "intellectual fulfillment." And that is the thread which connects both points - Darwinism as an observable process of differentiation is perfectly valid, but as the intellectual Holy Grail which explains away the need for a Creator, it is incredibly insufficient.