Review of Godless -- (Centers on Evolution)

Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter Coultergeist A Review by Jerry Coyne

H. L. Mencken once responded to a question asked by many of his readers: "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?" His answer was, "Why do men go to zoos?" Sadly, Mencken is not here to ogle the newest creature in the American Zoo: the Bleached Flamingo, otherwise known as Ann Coulter. This beast draws crowds by its frequent, raucous calls, eerily resembling a human voice, and its unearthly appearance, scrawny and pallid. (Wikipedia notes that "a white or pale flamingo ... is usually unhealthy or suffering from a lack of food.") The etiolated Coulter issued a piercing squawk this spring with her now-notorious book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Its thesis, harebrained even by her standards, is that liberals are an atheistic lot who have devised a substitute religion, replete with the sacraments of abortion, feminism, coddling of criminals, and -- you guessed it -- bestiality. Liberals also have their god, who, like Coulter's, is bearded and imposing. He is none other than Charles Darwin. But the left-wing god is malevolent, for Coulter sees Darwin as the root cause of every ill afflicting our society, not to mention being responsible for the historical atrocities of Hitler and Stalin.

The furor caused by her vicious remarks about the 9/11 widows ("I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.") has distracted people from the main topic of her book: evolutionary biology, or rather the pathetic pseudoscientific arguments of its modern fundamentalist challenger, Intelligent Design (ID). This occupies four of Coulter's eleven chapters. Enamored of ID, and unable to fathom a scientific reason why biologists don't buy it, Coulter suggests that scientists are an evil sub-cabal of atheist liberals, a group so addicted to godlessness that they must hide at all costs the awful "truth" that evolution didn't happen. She accuses evolutionists of brainwashing children with phony fossils and made-up "evidence," turning the kids into "Darwiniacs" stripped of all moral (i.e., biblical) grounding and prone to become beasts and genocidal lunatics. To Coulter, biologists are folks who, when not playing with test tubes or warping children's minds, encourage people to have sex with dogs. (I am not making this up.)

Any sane person who starts reading Godless will soon ask, Does Coulter really believe this stuff? The answer is that it doesn't much matter. What's far more disturbing than Coulter herself (and she's plenty disturbing: On the cover photo she has the scariest eyes since Rasputin) is the fact that Americans are lapping up her latest prose like a pack of starved cats. The buyers cannot be political opponents who just want to enjoy her "humor"; like me, those people wouldn't enrich her by a dime. (I didn't pay for my copy.) Rather, a lot of folks apparently like her ravings -- suggesting that, on some level at least, they must agree with her. And this means that the hundreds of thousands of Americans who put Coulter at the top of the best-seller lists see evolution as a national menace.

Well, that's hardly news. We've known for years that nearly half of all Americans believe in the Genesis account of creation, and only about 10 percent want evolution taught in public schools without mentioning ID or other forms of creationism. But it's worth taking up the cudgels once again, if only to show that, contrary to Coulter's claim, accepting Darwinism is not tantamount to endorsing immorality and genocide.

First, one has to ask whether Coulter (who, by the way, attacks me in her book) really understands the Darwinism she rejects. The answer is a resounding No. According to the book's acknowledgments, Coulter was tutored in the "complex ideas" of evolution by David Berlinski, a science writer; Michael Behe, a third-rate biologist at Lehigh University (whose own department's website disowns his bizarre ideas); and William Dembski, a fairly bright theologian who went off the intellectual rails and now peddles creationism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. These are the "giants" of the ID movement, which shows how retarded it really is. Learning biology from this lot is like learning elocution from George W. Bush.

As expected with such tutors, the Darwinism decried by Coulter is the usual distorted cardboard cut-out. All she does is parrot the ID line: There are no transitional fossils; natural selection can't create true novelty; some features of organisms could not have evolved and therefore must have been designed by an unspecified supernatural agent. And her "research" method consists of using quotes taken out of context, scouring biased secondary sources, and distorting what appears in the scientific literature. Judging by the shoddy documentation of the evolution section, I'm not convinced that the rest of the book isn't based on equally shoddy research. At any rate, I won't belabor the case that Coulter makes for ID, as I've already shown in TNR that her arguments are completely bogus.

What is especially striking is Coulter's failure to tell us what she really believes about how the earth's species got here. It's clear that she thinks God had a direct hand in it, but beyond that we remain unenlightened. IDers believe in limited amounts of evolution. Does Coulter think that mammals evolved from reptiles? If not, what are those curious mammal-like reptiles that appear exactly at the right time in the fossil record? Did humans evolve from ape-like primates, or did the Designer conjure us into existence all at once? How did all those annoying fossils get there, in remarkable evolutionary order?

And, when faced with the real evidence that shows how strongly evolution trumps ID, she clams up completely. What about the massive fossil evidence for human evolution -- what exactly were those creatures 2 million years ago that had human-like skeletons but ape-like brains? Did a race of Limbaughs walk the earth? And why did God -- sorry, the Intelligent Designer -- give whales a vestigial pelvis, and the flightless kiwi bird tiny, nonfunctional wings? Why do we carry around in our DNA useless genes that are functional in similar species? Did the Designer decide to make the world look as though life had evolved? What a joker! And the Designer doesn't seem all that intelligent, either. He must have been asleep at the wheel when he designed our appendix, back, and prostate gland.

There are none so blind as those who will not see, and Coulter knows that myopia about evolution is a lucrative game. After all, she is a millionaire, reveling in her status as a celebrity and stalked by ignorazzis. I have never seen anyone enjoy her own inanity so much.

But after ranting for nearly a hundred pages about evolution, Coulter finally gives away the game on page 277: "God exists whether or not archaeopteryx ever evolved into something better. If evolution is true, then God created evolution." Gee. Evolution might be true after all! But she's just spent a hundred pages telling us it isn't! What gives? As Tennessee Williams's Big Daddy said, there's a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room.

What's annoying about Coulter (note: there's more than one thing!) is that she insistently demands evidence for evolution (none of which she'll ever accept), but requires not a shred of evidence for her "alternative hypothesis." She repeatedly assures us that God exists (not just any God -- the Christian God), that there is only one God (she's no Hindu, folks), that we are made in the image of said God, that the Christian Bible, like Antonin Scalia's Constitution, "is not a 'living' document" (that is, not susceptible to changing interpretation; so does she think that Genesis is literally true?), and that God just might have used evolution as part of His plan. What makes her so sure about all this? And how does she know that the Supreme Being, even if It exists, goes by the name of Yahweh, rather than Allah, Wotan, Zeus, or Mabel? If Coulter just knows these things by faith alone, she should say so, and then tell us why she's so sure that what Parsees or Zunis just know is wrong. I, for one, am not prepared to believe that Ann Coulter is made in God's image without seeing some proof.

Moreover, if evolution is wrong, why is it the central paradigm of biology? According to Coulter, it's all a big con game. In smoky back rooms at annual meetings, evolutionists plot ways to jam Darwin down America's throat, knowing that even though it is scientifically incorrect, Darwinism (Coulter says) "lets them off the hook morally. Do whatever you feel like doing -- screw your secretary, kill Grandma, abort your defective child -- Darwin says it will benefit humanity!"

Unfortunately for Coulter (but fortunately for humanity), science doesn't work this way. Scientists gain fame and high reputation not for propping up their personal prejudices, but for finding out facts about nature. And if evolution really were wrong, the renegade scientist who disproved it -- and showed that generations of his predecessors were misled -- would reach the top of the scientific ladder in one leap, gaining fame and riches. All it would take to trash Darwinism is a simple demonstration that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, or that our closest genetic relative is the rabbit. There is no cabal, no back-room conspiracy. Instead, the empirical evidence for evolution just keeps piling up, year after year.

As for biologists' supposed agenda of godlessness -- how ridiculous! Yes, a lot of scientists are atheists, but most have better things to do than deliberately destroy people's faith. This goes doubly for the many scientists -- roughly a third of them -- who are religious. After all, one of the most vocal (and effective) opponents of ID is Ken Miller of Brown University, a devout Catholic.

The real reason Coulter goes after evolution is not because it's wrong, but because she doesn't like it -- it doesn't accord with how she thinks the world should be. That's because she feels, along with many Americans, that "Darwin's theory overturned every aspect of Biblical morality." What's so sad -- not so much for Coulter as for Americans as a whole -- is that this idea is simply wrong. Darwinism, after all, is just a body of thought about the origin and change of biological diversity, not a handbook of ethics. (I just consulted my copy of The Origin of Species, and I swear that there's nothing in there about abortion or eugenics, much less about shtupping one's secretary.)

If Coulter were right, evolutionists would be the most beastly people on earth, not to be trusted in the vicinity of a goat. But I've been around biologists all of my adult life, and I can tell you that they're a lot more civil than, say, Coulter. It's a simple fact that you don't need the Bible -- or even religion -- to be moral. Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews, who don't follow the New Testament, usually behave responsibly despite this problem; and atheists and agnostics derive morality from non-biblical philosophy. In fact, one of the most ethical people I know is Coulter's version of the Antichrist: the atheistic biologist Richard Dawkins (more about that below). Dawkins would never say -- as Coulter does -- that Cindy Sheehan doesn't look good in shorts, that Al Franken resembles a monkey, or that 9/11 widows enjoyed the deaths of their husbands. Isn't there something in the Bible about doing unto others?

The mistake of equating Darwinism with a code of behavior leads Coulter into her most idiotic accusation: that the Holocaust and numberless murders of Stalin can be laid at Darwin's door. "From Marx to Hitler, the men responsible for the greatest mass murders of the twentieth century were avid Darwinists." Anyone who is religious should be very careful about saying something like this, because, throughout history, more killings have been done in the name of religion than of anything else. What's going on in the Middle East, and what happened in Serbia and Northern Ireland? What was the Inquisition about, and the Crusades, and the slaughter following the partition of India? Religion, of course -- or rather, religiously inspired killing. (Come to think of it, the reason Hitler singled out the Jews is that Christians regarded them for centuries as the killers of Christ. And I don't remember any mention of Darwinism in the Moscow Doctors' Trial.) If Darwin is guilty of genocide, then so are God, Jesus, Brahma, Martin Luther, and countless popes.

As Coulter well knows, the misuse of an idea for evil purposes does not mean that idea is wrong. In fact, she accuses liberals of making this very error: She attacks them for worrying that the message of racial inequality conveyed by the book The Bell Curve could promote genocide: "Only liberals could interpret a statement that people have varying IQs as a call to start killing people." Back at you, Ann: Only conservatives could interpret a statement that species evolved as a call to start killing people.

Coulter clearly knows better. I conclude that the trash-talking blonde bit is just a shtick (admittedly, a clever one) calculated to make her rich and famous. (Look at her website, where she whines regularly that she is not getting enough notice.) Her hyper-conservativism seems no more grounded than her faith. She has claimed that the Bible is her favorite book, she is rumored to go to church, and on the cover of Godless you see a cross dangling tantalizingly in her décolletage. But could anybody who absorbed the Sermon on the Mount write, as she does of Richard Dawkins, "I defy any of my coreligionists to tell me they do not laugh at the idea of Dawkins burning in hell"? Well, I wouldn't want Coulter to roast (there's not much meat there anyway), but I wish she'd shut up and learn something about evolution. Her case for ID involves the same stupid arguments that fundamentalists have made for a hundred years. They're about as convincing as the blonde hair that gets her so much attention. By their roots shall ye know them.

So, if Hitler misuses Christianity, that says nothing about Christianity.

I love sophism. I never used the word Christianity. OK?

Hitler USED religion to promote his cause of a master race, because some of his followers would believe that. He used evolution to promote his cause too, because others would believe that.

But if Hitler misused Darwin, that says bad things about Darwin. I think I have it now.

No, you don't have it, but you can think you do.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say most of the history of life on Earth was OVER before Hitler was born. How does that sound?

......pointless. Hitler's promotion of a master race by human action, such as genocide and murder, was not religious; there's a commandment against that if you care to do some research. His "final solution" from factories such as Sobibor was his own concept of the survival of the fittest...........now, doesn't Darwin say something about that?

"Can you give one, just one, specific prediction made by ID or creationism?

Sure Creationist predicted that there would be evidence contradicting radiometric ages. Radioisotope halos and diamond crystal studies are providing that evidence.

Creationist reasoned that the magnetic flips must not have taken thousands of years each in accordance with evolutionary beliefs, but must have occurred relatively quickly. A rock was found that recorded a flip occuring within a matter of weeks as the rock cooled.

By specific, I mean as in pertaining to the discovery of a specific fossil, a specific gene, a specific type of animal or plant, a specific distribution of a particular biological population, etc.? "

Creationists predicted that none of the human organs would turn out to be vestigal as evolutionists claimed and turns out that none are.

Creationists predicted that the "non-coding (junk) DNA" would turn out to have function, and we are continuing to discover new functions in that code.

Creationists predicted that no gay genes would be found, and none have been.

Creation predicts that we wouldn't find missing links between man and ape, and we haven't. Along 6 different categories of measurement, all primate fossils are either clearly ape or clearly man with the exception of brain size which overlaps.

Specific genes? Well, I've already pointed out in this tread that it was the Creationist, George Mendel, who discovered Genetics. So it seems Creationists do have a history of predicting genes as we started the process.

What creationists don't do well, is predict fossils, but then neither does evolution. We know that God made a greater diversity, if only because we were already aware of extinct species long before evolution and Darwin. But we don't predict, what kind of diversity, we will find.

Evolution on the other hand, makes lots of predictions about what kind of fossils will be found, but most of those predictions are still waiting. And then again, there's that report this week of the baleen whale with teeth, that evolution didn't expect. So Creation may not be a great model for predicting fossils, but really, neither is Evolution.

"You find similar traits developing on different evolutionary trees, which does not support evolution. It's more to be expected from a common designer. You have a term for this, it's called convergent evolution. Just another area that real life didn't match evolutionary explanations and you adjusted your model."

From a pure common sense perspective I have no idea what you are talking about. Most of the people on this thread who speak from a scientific bias appear to have some sense of structure to their thinking. But, I try to follow what you are saying and I cannot find any foundational thinking. What is that you believe, how do you explain the beginnings?

You seem to be railing against a branch of religion that supplants reason with blind belief. Not all, indeed, not many Christian believers have fallen into that trap. There are, to be sure, some cult priests and preachers who demand allegiance to their peculiar twist on the Bible.
I raise the issue of experience of God because it alone illuminates Biblical authority. An atheist can learn nothing of the truths of the Bible.
What you call sacred mystery is, perhaps, a portal into a life of spirituality. Certainly the mysterium tremendum is the rock that grounds one who is reborn into a personal knowledge of God. It is this experience of Ultimate Reality that further, illuminates all investigation of the world. Scientists may not remain aloof from the necessity of acknowledging their debt to their personal weltaunschung. We all live in a world of our own making. Some are fortunate enough to recognize that a relationship with reality is to be desired above the earthly riches of solipsism.

All of the instances you mentioned to be Islamofascist are religiously based. Coyne said 'religious', not 'Christian'.

He did. However, not all religions are the same. He said that Ann was wrong that the greatest number of deaths throughout history could be laid at the feet of atheistic communists. He said the greatest bloodshed was due to religion. He's right only if he considers the atheists' struggle against other religions in his calculus and proves Ann's point in the process.

If you read his "work" again you will see that he attempts to equate all religions, including Christianity, in his blood liable. I was simply showing that if he wants to talk religious bloodshed, not all religions are equal.

As long as you attribute enjoying your husband's death as reasonable, then Coulter's arguments could be so construed. She is an embarrassment to what used to be conservative causes. She makes many misstatements of evolutionary theory; these misstatements have been corrected long before she decided to misuse them again.

Good morning, Doc!

Actually Doc, I don't think Ann's comments re: the "Jersey Girls" were all that over the top. Like Cindy Sheehan, they have benefitted from the death of a loved one (and Sheehan's son was a very honorable man who, were he still living, would most likely deplore his mother's mindless, anti-American antics), and took the opportunity of their widowhood to engage in hard-left political activism. Ann's angrument that their widow status is supposed to make them polemically bullet-proof is dead-on. I think most of the hand-ringing over Ann's comments is just so much hypocrisy on the part of the nattering ninny class.

If she is misstating evolutionary theory even though such "mistakes" have been corrected before, Wow, Ann must be really dumb. But somehow, I don't think so.

Maybe it's time to "correct" such statements again? You want to start?

Wow, Ann must be really dumb. But somehow, I don't think so.

She wrote four chapters of wild misstatement, hyperbole, and bizarre illogic. One can make allowance that maybe she is playing to the crowd, cynically writing what she thinks will sell, or generally starving for attention.

Still, she wrote four chapters on a subject she obviously knows nothing but nothing about. She regurgitated a cult literature which has been rebutted on FR (one of not many places outside of laundromat cork boards where such drivel is regularly posted) virtually every time it has reared its moronic head for the last eight years. I have to ask, how smart can she be?

All seriousness aside, are there Freepers who understand the evolution/ID stuff well enough to give me--and others--a set of brains on it?

Most of the people that I have personally known from working in biology and geosciences fields are not atheists. Contrary to popular notions many of them are church (or synagogue) going people, and most of them have some measure of religious faith. None of them believes that evolutionary theory, or other scientific theories such as plate tectonic theory, is necessarily in conflict with their religion.

What we are seeing in these threads, then, is not a conflict between science and religion. For most people, including most religious people, science and faith are not opposed to one another. What we are experiencing is a sectarian conflict. This conflict exists between those with a certain highly literal interpretation of the Genesis chapter and people who hold more mainstream theological viewpoints. The theological position of mainstream Judaism and Christianity (including conservative denominations such as the Southern Baptists) is that Lord exists beyond scientific scrutiny. The creationism/intelligent design movement, on the other hand, seeks to demonstrate the existence of the Creator through forensic evidence. When the physical evidence does not square with their theological position, it is the evidence and scientific method that become suspect. The result is the hostility demonstrated on these threads towards modern biology and science in general.

How many times in these threads have I heard people say "Liberal Christians are worse than atheists" or "You can't be a true Christian if you believe insects came before birds" and the like? This is a sectarian conflict. It is not "atheist science" versus Christianity at all. In actuality, this conflict is about the creationist/intelligent design movement seeking to elevate their theological position above the theological positions of others.

She regurgitated a cult literature which has been rebutted on FR... I have to ask, how smart can she be?

Your bias is properly noted. You have your liturgy, and we folks (who believe in God, the Creator) have ours. We can trade all sorts of information. That you feel so strongly that "nobody else, but scientists, could hold truth" shows a lot about your mental state. Your tagline says you actually know less about reality. (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.) You keep citing all sort of "scientific" sources to demonstrate your feelings of superiority. Yet, nothing in your posts has anything to do with the refutation of her viewpoint. It is all about denigrating her, and the rest of us having faith in God, apparently.

Your only common theme is a display of arrogance and it's accompanying air of dismissal. You can worship Charlie and his bones! Your science has not proven anything.

When there is an actual proof for your (macro-evolutionary) theory, I will change my mind, but I surely won't hold my breath... There is no proof I've seen yet, just an awful lot of supposition and conjecture! That's really a good demonstration of the "scientific community"!

As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. I think we are still a majority. Your science can only confirm what we already know...

Sure Creationist predicted that there would be evidence contradicting radiometric ages. Radioisotope halos and diamond crystal studies are providing that evidence.
Creationist reasoned that the magnetic flips must not have taken thousands of years each in accordance with evolutionary beliefs, but must have occurred relatively quickly. A rock was found that recorded a flip occuring within a matter of weeks as the rock cooled.
Creationists predicted that none of the human organs would turn out to be vestigal as evolutionists claimed and turns out that none are.
Creationists predicted that the "non-coding (junk) DNA" would turn out to have function, and we are continuing to discover new functions in that code.
Creationists predicted that no gay genes would be found, and none have been.

These are all examples of negatives. None are specific. None point to the discovery of a specific prediction. Come on now, if ID and creationism are good science, they should be able to point to a specific prediction - as in when, where, how a new fossil, new species, new gene should be found. All these 'predictions' are very vague, (and a couple are outright falsehoods, but I won't get into that here). As for your magnetic flip example, anyone who has taken Physics 101 knows a localized magnetic domain can flip. What we don't find are global magnetic domains flipping rapidly.

Let's make this easier. How about just one specific prediction - not one telling what won't be found or what won't be good enough, but one that tells us where to look for one particular phenomenon.

Here's another successful evolutionary prediction that does just that:

"Darwin pointed out that the Madagascar Star orchid has a spur 30 centimeters (about a foot) long, with a puddle of nectar at the bottom. Now, evolution says that nectar isn't free. Creatures that drink it pay for it, by carrying pollen away to another orchid. For that to happen, the creature must rub against the top of the spur. So, Darwin concluded that the spur had evolved its length as an arms race. Some creature had a way to reach deeply without shoving itself hard against the pollen-producing parts. Orchids with longer spurs would be more likely to spread their pollen, so Darwin's gradualistic scenario applied. The spur would evolve to be longer and longer. From the huge size, the creature must have evolved in return, reaching deeper and deeper. So, he predicted in 1862 that Madagascar has a species of hawkmoth with a tongue just slightly shorter than 30 cm. The creature that pollinated that orchid was not learned until 1902, forty years later. It was indeed a moth, and it had a 25 cm tongue. And in 1988 it was proven that moth-pollinated short-spurred orchids did set less seed than long ones."

Here is my first response to you:

"Coulter does not say, nor does she insinuate, that Darwin is the root cause of historical atrocities. She does point out how those who commit those atrocities are Darwinist. Stalin was a Darwinist. Hitler, who believed in a master race, was...what?"

Then you say:

You attempted to use Hitler to discredit Darwin. That was why I used Christianity to show what a stupid argument you were making. The parallel is precise. OK?

Do you notice how you claim my arguments are stupid? The back side of that statement is that you believe you're intelligent. Yet, while you berate me, you make some ridiculously invalid arguments. If I use Hitler, you can use Christianity? What type of a mind comes up with an excuse like that?

Yours is a case of imprecise precision; Darwinists are known for that. You would profit by reading the last two chapters in Godless, the ones that detail the frauds of the Darwin/Godless religion.

quod erat demonstrandum

Actually you cite some biased scientist who is trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Can't blame him since he has to prove it to get all that gummit graft he lives off. Bottom line is that the weight support is nothing more than some scientist's opinion.

There are litterally thousands of questions about this being anything other than a glorified catfish.

If you have the faith to believe that this is some sort of transitional species great, just don't count me in on this hoax. But you are good at namecalling and making your god scientist as the only side anyone should believe.

There should thousands of transitional species and you have this single weak link. The distance between monkey and man is the same as the distance between this fish and monkey or 1/1,000,000th the distance between man and God.

Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Shalom Israel

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