I like what Micheal Shermer says in his book "Why People Believe in Weird Things": Evolution is no more responsible for Americas' so called declining morals than the printing press is responsible for for Hitler's Mein Kampf or Mein Kampf is responsible for what people did with Hitler's ideology
Let me tell you what little I know about Michael Shermer, Jim Lippard, and that crowd and, granted it's pretty sparse, I suspect it's worth adding to whatever kind of weighting system you use in evaluating stuff you get from that direction.
It's one thing to claim to be skeptical, to have a skeptical attitude, to be from Missouri etc. etc. It's another thing to claim to be on some sort of mission from God to save western civilization and the white race from every sort of radical or unusual idea which ever comes down the highway, or to be some sort of a masterdebunker as Lippard and Shermer claim. That almost amounts to a claim of omniscience since, in real life, nobody has the time and energy for that, much less the talent.
In 1994 the first of a number of major Kronia (www.kronia.com) neo-catastrophism conferences took place in Portland Ore. and Shermer sent to that conference as his representative/reporter/semi-official eyes and ears an old psychotic by the name of Ellenberger who has been on another mission from God to annoy and intimidate people in Velikovsky/neo-catastrophist circles and generally attempt to break up such gatherings via disorderly conduct and who was declared to be persona-non-grata, i.e. not allowed in the door at the Portland conference aforehand, and Shermer knew this before sending Ellenberger there.
Now, near as I can tell, Shermer has a fiduciary responsibility to the people who shell out the $30/year or whatever a subscription to his rag costs because they are interested in being kept abreast of unusual scientific news and what not, to attempt to provide them with such news and, in my judgement, sending Ellenberger to the Portland conference amounted to a violation of that responsibility and, in fact, amounted to choosing to make a statement of some sort rather than attempt to provide his readers with any real information, since he could as easily have sent somebody who would have been allowed in.
That's basically all I know about Shermer; granted it's not much, but it's enough to prevent me from taking the guy seriously. It indicates, to me at least, that the guy is operating in accordance to some sort of an ideological program rather than any sort of a desire to seek truth or anything like that.
This is clearly wrong, JediGirl, which is to say you need to think more about it. Ideas do have consequences. If you continue to disagree, I would much like to hear your explanation.