Coulter delivers knockout

I didn't rush to pick up Ann Coulter's "Godless" – even though she is my favorite pundit.

I waited a whole five days after the infamous 6-6-6 release of her indictment of liberalism to devour it cover to cover.

Frankly, I thought I knew it all when it came to this particular subject – that what we call "liberalism" today is an all-encompassing religious system, completely irrational, completely devoid of any underpinnings in historical fact, common sense or human nature.

All the while pronouncing themselves to be "non-religious," it turns out these modern-day "liberals" are zealots of their own crude, primitive and barbaric faith.

As Coulter puts it: "Liberalism is a comprehensive belief system denying the Christian belief in man's immortal soul. Their religion holds that there is nothing sacred about human consciousness. It's just an accident no more significant than our possession of opposable thumbs. They deny what we know about ourselves: that we are moral beings in God's image. Without this fundamental understanding of man's place in the world, we risk being lured into misguided pursuits, including bestiality, slavery and PETA membership. Liberals swoon in pagan admiration of Mother Earth, mystified and overawed by her power. They deny the biblical idea of dominion and progress, the most ringing affirmation of which is the United States of America."

Unlike Coulter, who still seems to believe the Republicans have the antidote to the political and cultural toxins served up by liberals, I have rarely, if ever, hurled "liberalism" as an epithet. There are many reasons for that – not the least of which is that it means different things to different people at different times and different places.

But, ultimately, no matter which word you use to name the poison, Coulter has broken down the chemical composition of the contaminant.

This book is at once both profound and – this is where the pleasant surprise was – extremely funny!

I mean this is some of the best satire I have ever read. If you liked P.J. O'Rourke at his best, you will love "Godless: The Church of Liberalism." It has a more serious message and it is hysterically funny – even when acutely diagnosing the disease of modern liberalism.

I think more than any of her previous works, this one by Coulter will have, no pun intended, long legs.

Honestly, if you want to ensure that your kids do not grow up to be moral relativists, abortion-on-demand advocates, apologists for the grossest behavior of homosexuals, defenders of murderers, etc., put this book in their hands.

This is not just raw meat for the converted. This is potentially a powerful inoculation against a life wasted by promoting liberal shibboleths.

But, more than that, Coulter has provided us with a manifesto for more clearly perceiving the world in which we live. It's critical to understand we all have a worldview – both believer and non-believer alike. It's also important to understand the worldview of our opponents, our adversaries, our enemies, those who are out to get us at any cost.

I can't think of a better analysis – a more cogent assessment – of who those opponents, adversaries and enemies are than Coulter's "Godless." It's much more than I expected – even with my extraordinarily high expectations for anything Coulter does.

And, best of all, as depressing as are the facts Coulter uses so skillfully to make her case, she has developed a masterful wit that will, at times, leave you doubled over in laughter.

It's no wonder this book has shot right up to the No. 1 position on Amazon. It is destined for the No. 1 spot on the New York Times list – which will really tick off those Godless liberals on 42nd Street.

Only in that natural selection still remains the best fit to the available data. For immediate proof that natural selection operates, the closest-to-hand evidence is bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Newly introduced antibiotics are always amazingly effective, fr a limited time. Then bacteria evolve resistance, and we have to try newer compounds.

No, bacteria don't evolve resistance. In any bacterial population, there is variation in resistance to any particular antibiotic. That means that there are individual bacteria that are more resistant than other bacteria. Those that are not as resistant are killed off, leaving those whose resistance is greater. If enough of the lesser resistant bacteria are killed off, the population as a whole is considered more resistant to the antibiotic. But no individual bacteria has "evolved" a resistance to the antibiotic. Nor has the population as a whole devised any strategy to deal with the antibiotic by developing a means of resisting it. It's just a matter of having an already genetically diverse population with enough members that happen to be resistant to the antibiotic that something will be left over to continue reproducing. If you have a genetically identical population such as a strain of hybrid corn, none of the individual members of the population will survive something that will kill any one of them.

This is natural selection. It does nothing to ensure genetic diversity unless you consider that reducing the genetic variability within a population by splitting the population up into more genetically distinct subpopulations is an increase in genetic variability. According to neo-Darwinian theory, the only way of obtaining genetic diversity is from mutation of existing DNA or from borrowing of genetic material from other organisms. The problem with the first is that it is only altering not creating additional DNA. The problem with the second is that it is only swapping DNA that already exists. One way of trying to get around this involves the concept of transposing and copying stretches of DNA in order to create new genes. Still, this is shuffling something that is already there. It doesn't tell us how the DNA (most of which is pretty common across organisms) came to exist to begin with.

The existence of natural selection does not disprove intelligent design. Framed as a scientific hypothesis ("there exists at least one biological process or structure that cannot be explained by natural selection"), all ID supporters have to do to establish validity is to find ONE such example. The scientific world is still waiting.

Ha ha ha. Don't be ludicrous in positing as "the scientific world" those who refuse because of philosophical predispositions (not to mention emotional aversion) to even entertain anything having to do with ID.

This is natural selection. It does nothing to ensure genetic diversity unless you consider that reducing the genetic variability within a population by splitting the population up into more genetically distinct subpopulations is an increase in genetic variability. According to neo-Darwinian theory, the only way of obtaining genetic diversity is from mutation of existing DNA or from borrowing of genetic material from other organisms. The problem with the first is that it is only altering not creating additional DNA.

This is how natural selection works in ANY situation, with any living organism. All expressed genetic characeristics, such as the lengths of a tree-eating herbivore's neck, fall along a bell curve: a few individuals have much shorter necks than the median length, a few longer. If competition for food causes the longest-necked mammals to preferentially reproduce, the bell curve of neck length in the next generation is skewed toward greater length. After a great many generations have passed, you get giraffes.

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