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.

[Quark2005]

G-N are all human skulls and all within the range of modern human variability. (A) is a modern chimp, neither ancestral to humans or Australopithecus. B,C,D, & F are all Australopithecus apes, also not ancestral to humans. And E, like F, was in so bad of shape when found that it could have been reconstructed to be almost anything.

Glad you drew the line in the sand based on your own opinions. Interesting to see where you fall on the spectrum of other creationist opinions on the identity of transitional hominid skulls:

Creationist Classifications of Hominid Fossils

Specimen		Cuozzo (1998)	Gish (1985)	Mehlert (1996)	Bowden (1981) Menton (1988) Taylor (1992) Gish (1979)	Baker (1976) Taylor and Van Bebber (1995)	Taylor (1996) Lubenow (1992)
	ER 1813 (510 cc)	Ape	Ape	Ape	Ape	Ape	Ape
	Java (940 cc)	Ape	Ape	Human	Ape	Ape	Human
	Peking (915- 1225 cc)	Ape	Ape	Human	Ape	Human	Human
	ER 1470 (750 cc)	Ape	Ape	Ape	Human	Human	Human
	ER 3733 (850 cc)	Ape	Human	Human	Human	Human	Human
	WT 15000 (880 cc)	Ape	Human	Human	Human	Human	Human

Interesting that you are so adamant about which skulls are human and which are apes (particularly those in the F-H range), when 'renowned creationist experts' don't come to the same conclusions. It's almost as if - are you ready for this - it's not entirely clear as to where the apes end and the humans begin - like there's some sort of transitional fossils around!

DOUBLESPEAK Alert!!!

Come on now, no one's doublespeaking here. All I said was No one ever claimed that this was lineal series of transitionals, but the relation and progression through time is clear. Ever heard of cousins? Neanderthals, for example, were a 'cousin' species (and a clearly distinct species) of humans that happened to more closely resemble our apelike ancestors than we do - this ain't rocket science here, and no one's trying to 'doublespeak'. I'm trying to clarify.

BTW, Austalopithecus and Homo habilis are not the same species.

Also, it's not as if this photograph represents the entire depth of evidence of of the evolutionary link between apes and humans. There is a wealth of evidence coming from many fields of research. The paleontological evidence (the depth of which cannot be represented by a single photograph) is by itself damning evidence - but it goes far beyond that (but I think you already know that). I hate to say it, but O.J. is guilty, and we're related to apes.

Still waiting for a specific prediction, showing some idea of how and/or where a particular item, organism, or phenomenon will be found, according to 'creation science'. Here's another one relating to this topic (albeit older and more general than the other predictions I've listed, but still more specific than any creationist 'prediction'):

"Darwin predicted, based on homologies with African apes, that human ancestors arose in Africa. That prediction has been supported by fossil and genetic evidence (Ingman et al. 2000)."

Excerpts from the wonderfully informative website talkorigins.org, putting creationism in its rightful place as pseudoscience since 1996

[DannyTN]

It's no surprise that some of the older opinions from creationists had 1470 as human. After all the only information they had was pictures of it's first reconstruction that showed a flat face.

In light of the ear drum x-rays and new information, I bet there is not as much dissagreement.

[alarm rider]

Good point.

[Diamond]

You're misrepresenting the talkorigins write-up. The data in this case were fabricated to match the prediction.

I didn't even read the talkorigins write-up so how could I misrepresent it? I just knew that's what I would probably get. Are they the source of the outrageous and libelous allegation of fabricated data?

Cordially,

[Diamond]

I don't see the peer review. I don't see independent research verifying this.

I would like to see "peer reviewed" research attacking it, to see if it holds up.

What journal was this printed in?

It is linked in a footnote to the article I linked. http://www.icr.org/pdf/research/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf

Cordially,

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I didn't even read the talkorigins write-up so how could I misrepresent it?

There's no doubt about that.

But you said:

Figure 2. Model-predicted (red and magenta diamonds) and measured (blue dots) helium leak rates of zircons. The data fit the 6,000-year prediction very well.

That is a "single Creationist prediction" that has been proven correct.

Before I get a knee-jerk reference to TalkOrigins, read one of the reseachers wrote about it himself.

This is a simple tautology. Talkorigins doesn't support this at all.

[Diamond]

Talkorigins doesn't support this at all.

Of course they don't. I don't even have to read it anymore to know that they would have to come up with some wild accusation that I suspected would be referred to in rebuttal to this data. If on the other hand, some 'peer reviewed' researchers can destroy this hypothesis, more power to them. That's what science should be.

Cordially,

[Stultis]

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.")

Analogy doesn't quite work. The flamingo gets it's color from the food it consumes. Since Anne reportedly (even, I believe, self-reportedly) subsist primarily on cigarettes and red wine, she should be Cabernet colored.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

If on the other hand, some 'peer reviewed' researchers can destroy this hypothesis, more power to them.

Now if only the author would submit it to a journal.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Open paths have, up until recently been used to refute irreducible complexity (basically it indicates that individual parts of an organism evolve independently - each of which is generally useless - until they reach a point where the sum of the parts is useful. e.g. the flagellum).

Since, the logic behind open Darwinian paths is untenable (being neither falsifiable nor testable), irreducible complexity critics have recently generally conceded the Open Darwinian Paths argument is a dead-end and bring up closed Darwinian paths instead - where a useless appendage evolves, then sub appendages (which by themselves are useless) evolve within the appendage until the appendage gains functionality.

This is untestable (and probably unfalsifiable). The advantage, from the standpoint of Darwinists, is that this brings the whole thing into acceptable probability from a mathematical perspective. That is, if you only consider the probability of each part evolving separately rather than the probability of the whole evolving as a useful function. If the probability of the whole function itself is considered (rather than the individual parts making up the function), the probability of irreducible complexity being resolved in a non-designed fashion are somewhat less than the number of atoms in the universe.

So you'll have to excuse me if I get a big laugh when Darwinists shout down ID because it is "neither testable nor falsifiable" but have no problem accepting non falsifiable and non testable theses which support their position.

As far as Darwin falsifying his theory, let me quote you from his "Origin of Species:"

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

Sounds to me like I have to take a lot on faith in his posit there.

[curiosity]

Wow, for a scientist, this guy sure has some whit:

"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."

That had me rolling on the floor!

[js1138]

Open paths have, up until recently been used to refute irreducible complexity (basically it indicates that individual parts of an organism evolve independently - each of which is generally useless - until they reach a point where the sum of the parts is useful. e.g. the flagellum).

But, of course, the parts of a flagellum are independently useful, and a path can be found in which all steps are useful.

I find it interesting that the unnamed Designer would lavish so much love and attention on an object having the primary function of killing infants and children.

[tortoise]

The advantage, from the standpoint of Darwinists, is that this brings the whole thing into acceptable probability from a mathematical perspective. That is, if you only consider the probability of each part evolving separately rather than the probability of the whole evolving as a useful function.

This is true if and only if you presume a single arbitrary path. However, one can prove mathematically in the abstract that there are an astronomical number of fully functional development paths between any two points in the phase space such that the aggregate mathematical "improbability" of the transition is not particularly improbable at all. The probability of the transition occurring is very different than the probability of any particular transition occuring. The mathematics is correct, but your model is wrong -- you are not computing the improbability you think you are computing.

Probability theory has never been terribly intuitive. Most people are terrible at applying correctly.

[Stultis]

I don't find it funny myself. A conservative wielding arguments as pathetic, weak, and just plain stupid/ignorant as those Coulter puts forward against "Darwinism" -- as much so as any Michael Moore has ever used against Walmart or Halliburton -- is just sad.

[Stultis]

Sorry, but Humphreys' response to Henke just strikes me as pathetic. There's all sorts of evasion, will PRETENDING to answer the criticisms. Try searching for the word "vacuum" in the Humphreys article, for instance. It's not there! And this was one of the primary criticisms (using Helium diffusion measured in a vacuum to model diffusion in the high pressure environment of deep rocks). But it's only one of the many that Humprheys ignores, while dishonestly claiming to list and respond to them all.

Then there all manner of little nasties, like describing Henke as a "part time instructor" [FULL STOP] without noting that he holds a Ph.D. and is an active research scientist.

In all, very typical of "creation science". Thanks for the instructive example.

BTW, Henke's response to the Humphreys article you linked is here:

Young-Earth Creationist Helium Diffusion "Dates"
Fallacies Based on Bad Assumptions and Questionable Data
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/zircons.html

[Stultis]

I didn't even read the talkorigins write-up

How convenient! You're a good little creationist. This is exactly the behavior Humphreys and ilk expect of you.

so how could I misrepresent it? I just knew that's what I would probably get.

So much easier to "just know" than to just read!

Are they the source of the outrageous and libelous allegation of fabricated data?

Yeah. That's instructive too. Only reading Humprheys would (and apparently did) lead you to believe that the charge (which, btw, wasn't that the data was fabricated, but that the samples were tainted) came directly and quite logically FROM THE CREATIONISTS OWN DATA (quoting Henke's original article):

Inadequate Biotite Separations from the 750-Meter Sample

Successful helium diffusion studies on biotites and zircons require mineral samples that are sufficiently pure. In Appendix C of Humphreys et al. (2003a, p. 20), Dr. Kenneth A. Farley notes that the purity of the 750-meter zircon samples was good:

"We verified that the separate was of high purity and was indeed zircon."

In contrast, the following statements by Dr. Farley and Humphreys et al. {in braces} in Appendix B of Humphreys et al. (2003a, p. 19) raise serious doubts about the acceptable purity of the 750-meter biotites:

"He diffusion in this [Fenton Hill core biotite] sample follows a rather strange pattern, with a noticeable curve at intermediate temperatures. I have no obvious explanation for this phenomenon. Because biotite BT-1B [Beartooth Gneiss, Wyoming, USA] did not show this curve, I doubt it is vacuum breakdown. I ran more steps, with a drop in temperature after the 500°C step, to see if the phenomenon is reversible. It appears to be, i.e., the curve appears again after the highest T step, but the two steps (12, 13) that define this curve had very low gas yield and high uncertainties. It is possible that we are dealing with more than one He source (multiple grain sizes or multiple minerals?). {We [Humphreys et al.] think it is likely there were some very small helium-bearing zircons still embedded in the biotite flakes, which would be one source. The other source would be the helium diffused out of larger zircons no longer attached to the flakes.}"

According to Humphreys et al. (2004), Jakov Kapusta of Activation Laboratories, Ltd., extracted the biotites and zircons from both the 750-meter (p. 4-5) and 1490-meter (p. 5) samples. However, Humphreys et al. (2003a, p. 6, 17) give a different account and claim that ICR personnel were responsible for extracting the biotites from the 750-meter specimen. Considering the ICR's poor record at separating specific minerals from rocks, it's not surprising that Farley and Humphreys et al. (2003a) would discover impurities in the biotites if ICR personnel were actually responsible for the separations. Of course, separating minerals from rocks is not easy and pure separations are not always possible. Nevertheless, many geochemical studies require high purity separations even if it means sorting and cleaning microscopic grains by hand. Because Humphreys et al. (2003a, p. 19) admit that their samples probably contain microscopic zircon impurities or other sources of helium contamination, the 750-meter biotite results in their Appendix B cannot be trusted.

[curiosity]

Oh, I agree with you about Coulter's arguments. They're just stupid and sad, not funny for the most part. The only exception is the line in her book about scientists "bussing" white moths to the inner-city and black moths to the suburbs. That got a chuckle out of me.

In my previous post I was talking about the reviewer's closing paragraph. You've got to admit that was hillarious.

[Stultis]

I just don't think it's funny when you can JUSTIFIABLY savage a conservative like that! But, yeah, it was well written rhetoric/polemic.

And, yeah, as disappointed as I am with Coulter, I still also get a kick out of many or her lines! (She had a really funny one about the Senator Allen "macaca" controversy, but it escapes me at the moment. Anybody?)

[freedumb2003]

I would like to see "peer reviewed" research attacking it, to see if it holds up.

There is no peer reviewed "attacks" on cook books, readers digest articles, b.c. comic strips, Star Trek novels or lots of other things. Peer reviewed science journals are reserved for science. Peer reviewed critiques are also reserved for science.

http://www.icr.org...

ICR is not a scientific organization. At best, it is a political organization.

But I would like to think that your heart is in the right place.