I tend to agree with you as to Marx's readability. However, if one judges him by his influence, and the fact that he's still in print after 150 years, Marx was quite a successful fellow. He did not, however, personally harm anyone, so far as I know. Nor did his work -- words on a page, after all -- harm anybody. The fact that other people used his ideas as the basis to harm hundreds of millions does not change the fact that Marx himself had no direct part in it.
Yet it is quite proper to condemn Marx for the harm his ideas have caused, because his ideas were so very pernicious. Which sets us up nicely to apply the same standards to Gould.
Gould's work has been widely used -- especially by the left -- as a justification to undermine the traditional moral foundations of our society, the disappearance of which has resulted in harm to many people. If we can condemn Marx, we can plausibly condemn Gould, too.
Of course, the very idea that "harm to hundreds of millions" is a bad thing, is something that Gould the atheist evolutionist could not rationally have defended. After all, developing the means to inflict harm, or to avoid being harmed, are presented as the primary engine of evolution.
At any rate, random evolution does not allow us to make the sort of absolute moral claims that is required to condemn a man for his ideas.
One of the worst analogies I've encountered lately.
Of course, the very idea that "harm to hundreds of millions" is a bad thing, is something that Gould the atheist evolutionist could not rationally have defended. After all, developing the means to inflict harm, or to avoid being harmed, are presented as the primary engine of evolution. At any rate, random evolution does not allow us to make the sort of absolute moral claims that is required to condemn a man for his ideas.
Come now. There are certainly Christians with exemplary moral character, but there are also self-described Christians, including some of the clergy of various denominations, who are quite immoral -- just read the headlines. And there are examples of athiests who have very strict morality. Also, there were the so-called "virtuous pagans" in the Greek and Roman world. Further, I know loads of people who believe evolution is a good scientific theory who live entirely virtuous lives. If you want to believe that only your denomination can give man morality, go ahead, but there's just too much evidence to the contrary.