Review of Godless -- (Centers on Evolution)

Powells Review a Day ^ | August 10, 2006 | Jerry Coyne

[publius1]

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.

[Dimensio]

Fact is you folks who live your lives studying and believing these charlatan scientists have brainwashed yourselves into taking everything they say as gospel.

You have yet to demonstrate that any of the scientists are "charlatan", and you are asserting without evidence that their claims are taken as "gospel". Your unsubstanitated assertions do not demonstrate that the theory of evolution is false of flawed.

Every example of a transitional species you put up, and there would have to be millions have skeptics and questions about their validity for good reason.

You have provided no evidence to support this claim.

You can dismiss it as being ignorant Creationist Troglodytes, but there are more and more of us as we realize the odds are far too astronomical to be believed.

To what "odds" do you refer? Please provide or reference the relevant calculations for these "odds" and explain how they relate to the discussion.

Ann is right, God makes more sense.

To which "God", out of the thousands of often mutually exclusive deities worshipped and acknowledged throughout humans history do you refer and why does that particular deity "make more sense" than all others? Also explain why the theory of evolution does not make sense. Please refrain from re-employing your previous false claim that there exist no transitional fossils.

[MHGinTN]

In my reading the other day it was interesting to notice that even the 'Cambrian Explosion' fossil record contains what are very likely transitional species (worms with stubby legs, for instance). Now that I'm noticing the transitionals in my reading, they seem to be 'accumulating at an astonishing pace'!

[bray]

I am talking about the One True Living God not some bunch of fake and twisted rocks you guys worship. Nebraska man, Piltdown man?.

Correction: I put up plenty of evidence, you guys just don't choose to look at it. The old Cindy Sheehag above rebuke stance.

Anyone who is not an evolutionist will not be accepted by evolutionists. Nomal liberal argument. Ann destroyed you guys' sense of invincibility because you are no longer Cindy Sheehan's anymore.

So how did the Eye evolve?? How can it be evolved with all of it's complexity. It takes millions of miracles for you to read this simple sentence. Prove the eye is not a miracle. Prove that your faith in Darwin is less than my faith in God.

Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters

[Coyoteman]

It seems we only find fossils for species that once were successful. Where are the fossils of the unsuccessful ones? [I gather that was Ann Coulter’s actual question, as best as I can make it out without having closely followed her argument.] Or are we to suppose that unsuccessful species don’t live long enough to leave fossil evidence? That by itself might indicate a very serious “gap” in the fossil record: We have no evidence for the unsuccessful species. An “absence of evidence” has implications for the rigor of the theory….

How do you know we have no fossils from the unsuccessful ones? Can you tell from looking at a fossil whether it was successful or unsuccessful?

[Coyoteman]

fake and twisted rocks you guys worship. Nebraska man, Piltdown man?

Those are a mistake (fooled one guy) and a hoax (which was quickly rooted out and ignored--by scientists).

(Your "worship" comment exposes both your bias and your ignorance of how science works.)

What do you think of this nice specimen?

---

Fossil: Sts 5

Site: Sterkfontein Cave, South Africa (1)

Discovered By: R. Broom & J. Robinson 1947 (1)

Estimated Age of Fossil: 2.5 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, floral & faunal data (1, 4)

Species Name: Australopithecus africanus (1, 2)

Gender: Male (based on CAT scan of wisdom teeth roots) (1, 30) Female (original interpretation) (4)

Cranial Capacity: 485 cc (2, 4)

Information: No tools found in same layer (4)

Interpretation: Erect posture (based on forward facing foramen magnum) (8)

Nickname: Mrs. Ples (1)

See original source for notes:
http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=24

[PatrickHenry]

Transitional species -- while they are alive and thriving -- don't have any features that indicate they're transitional; and it's not apparent by looking at them that their distant descendants will be considerably different. They're happy creatures, well-adapted to their environments. But as it gradually gets colder (or hotter, or wetter, etc.) and only a few of their offspring survive long enough to reproduce, it will be obvious only in retrospect that they were eventually superseded by better-adapted forms.

[Coyoteman]

Transitional species -- while they are alive and thriving -- don't have any features that indicate they're transitional; and it's not apparent by looking at them that their distant descendants will be considerably different. They're happy creatures, well-adapted to their environments. But as it gradually gets colder (or hotter, or wetter, etc.) and only a few of their offspring survive long enough to reproduce, it will be obvious only in retrospect that they were eventually superseded by better-adapted forms.

Aw, you gave away the answer. I wanted to see if BB knew anything about this stuff.

[PatrickHenry]

Well, there are those goofy-looking ones that have a sign that says: "Yes, I know I'm a mess, but that's because I'm a species in transition. Please come back in a thousand generations and check out my descendants."

[ChessExpert]

The greatest mass murders in history have been perpetrated by the godless (atheistic communists).

True. Atheist communists murdered more people in the 20th century than have Christians in 20 centuries, or Jews in all history. So far, Muslims do not begin to compare to the communists, but jihadist Muslims seem to be the greatest problem today.

[Dimensio]

I am talking about the One True Living God not some bunch of fake and twisted rocks you guys worship.

You are mistaken. I worship no rocks; fake, twisted or otherwise.

Nebraska man, Piltdown man?.

What is the relevance of this incomplete question?

Correction: I put up plenty of evidence, you guys just don't choose to look at it.

You have provided no evidence. You have made several assertions, but you have offered no evidence to suggest that they were correct.

Anyone who is not an evolutionist will not be accepted by evolutionists.

Please demonstrate that this statement is true.

Nomal liberal argument.

This appears to be a non-sequitur. We are discussing evolution, not liberalism.

Ann destroyed you guys' sense of invincibility because you are no longer Cindy Sheehan's anymore.

Cindy Sheehan has no relevance to this discusion whatsoever. It appears that you have not done any actual research on the subject of evolution at all. Why, then, should your claims on the subject be given any credence?

So how did the Eye evolve??

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vision.html

How can it be evolved with all of it's complexity. It takes millions of miracles for you to read this simple sentence.

Please provide evidence of this claim.

Prove the eye is not a miracle.

You have confused the nature of burden of proof. You are the one who has made a specific claim -- that the eye is a "miracle" -- and as such it is your responsibility to show that the claim is accurate.

Prove that your faith in Darwin is less than my faith in God.

What do you mean by "faith in Darwin"?

[b_sharp]

"A lot of words about evolution. None about Darwinism. Note that in Ann's book, she specifically stated that when she was talking of evolution in that book she meant evolution as preached by Darwin.

What exactly do you think 'Darwinism' is?

Points 2,6,8,9,10,11,13,14,15,16,17,18 all derive directly from what Darwin discovered. The only difference is the inclusion of a mechanism, the gene, for the transport of inheritable features. That method of transport was unknown to Darwin, although he suggested a need for something like DNA.

The division between Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian evolution is based on the discovery of DNA/genes. Otherwise they are the same, they both include natural selection(among other types of selection), descent with modification, common descent, and an ancient Earth.

If you want to differentiate between Darwinian and Neo-darwinian evolution then you need to consider Darwinian evolution a subset of Neo-darwinian evolution.

All of those areas that Coulter attacked were those areas that Darwinian and Neo-darwinian evolution (the modern sythesis) share.

By the way, the reason modern evolutionary theory is call the Synthetic Theory of Evolution is because it is a synthesis of the old Darwinian theory and genetics.

If you insist on claiming Coulter is attacking Darwinism but not the SToE then you are saying she is attacking those areas of the old theory that are no longer used. Why would she bother attacking something that is no longer considered a part of the SToE?

"Sorry, but Darwinism, even as described by Darwin himself is not falsifiable.

Darwin himself mentioned at least one way of falsifying his theory.

"Not to mention that neither open nor closed Darwinian paths are falsifiable - nor testable for that matter.

Could you please explain this in more detail?

"Logically, Darwinism is an open loop. Once again, note once again, that I refer to Darwinism, which has many earmarks of a religious cult. I do not say anything about evolution itself.

In what way is 'Darwinism' an open loop?

The theory of evolution proposed by Darwin is the basis for modern evolutionary theories.

[b_sharp]

By the vitriol you bring to your posts it would be easy to surmise your faith is not as secure as you would like it to be.

Anyone with a secure faith would consider the evidence for the SToE without bias. Can you do that?

[b_sharp]

" True. Atheist communists murdered more people in the 20th century than have Christians in 20 centuries, or Jews in all history. So far, Muslims do not begin to compare to the communists, but jihadist Muslims seem to be the greatest problem today.

Does that mean all atheists are likely to go out and murder another human simply due to their atheism?

Should I now go out a kill a few people?

[PatrickHenry]

Should I now go out a kill a few people?

Why not? Darwin did. That's why he recanted on his deathbed.
</creationism mode>

[bray]

Australopithecus afarensis, or "Lucy," has been considered a missing link for years. However, studies of the inner ear, skulls and bones have shown that she was merely a pygmy chimpanzee that walked a bit more upright than some other apes. She was not on her way to becoming human.
Homo erectus has been found throughout the world. He is smaller than the average human of today, with a proportionately smaller head and brain cavity. However, the brain size is within the range of people today and studies of the middle ear have shown that he was just like current Homo sapiens. Remains are found throughout the world in the same proximity to remains of ordinary humans, suggesting coexistence. Australopithecus africanus and Peking man were presented as ape-men missing links for years, but are now both considered Homo erectus.

Another highly questioned example. If evolution was a fact than there would be litterally millions of examples littering the earth. Rather you have to come up with 5 or 6 questionable examples. You are satisfied because the high priests of Darwinism say they are "objectively studied under gummit grants" true.

Pray for W and Our Troops

[bray]

What vitriol? Must be making points when you have to come up with that lame response. The internet and truth destroys liberal lies.

Pray for W and Our Troops

[bray]

Your article of the physics of the eye are pretty much a rediculous theory. Your belief in this is truly amazing. You want everyone to believe it just happened due to natural selection.

Nobody but the evomafia believes it anymore. http://www.gennet.org/facts/metro10.html

Pray for W and Our Troops

[bray]

If the ends justify the means.

Pray for W and Our Troops

[Coyoteman]

Nice cut and paste from http://www.allaboutcreation.org/human-evolution.htm.

Do you actually know what any of this means? Did you verify the accuracy of these statements? Or do you really believe that creationist websites tell the truth about evolution?

[Dimensio]

Your article of the physics of the eye are pretty much a rediculous theory.

Why is it ridiculous? Please support your claim with evidence.

You want everyone to believe it just happened due to natural selection.

You are mistaken. Natural selection is not the only mechanism that drives evolution. That you do not know this suggests again that your lack a sufficient understanding of the subject to credibly speak on it.

http://www.gennet.org/facts/metro10.html

The article that you have referenced employs a false analogy in suggesting that the eye must have appeared all an once, fully formed. There is no justification for this premise, thus the conclusion is meaningless.