A couple of cursory observations.
...evolutionary thinking itself is shedding considerable light on an array of questions and problems, from ... from ecology to software design. Such research is yielding anti-designer results.
Being easily amused, I never fail to be amused by the contradiction of "software design yielding anti-designer results." (This even despite the horrid new software on which the firm spent way too much money, which we are now forced to use:^). The point being that there has to be a mind to start with, coupled with the hardware to make the thought product do anything. Natural selection itself, like history is not a force. It doesn't produce anything. It is an effect, not a cause of anything.
Kristol has been quite candid about his belief that religion is essential for inculcating and sustaining morality in culture.
This is not an idea original to Kristol. George Washington (and other Founders) said pretty much the same thing, not because they viewed religion as a useful fiction, but because they believed it to be true. Karl Marx's cynical half-truth about opiatic effects nothwithstanding, true religion does not dull people to reality, it arouses them to do good, and restrains them from doing evil.
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. )
Cordially,
I agree, but I think what is at issue here are those who (mistakenly, IMO) attack Darwinism because they perceive Darwinism itself to be an attack on religion, regardless of the truth of it. If it turns out to be true, and I think the evidence has been trending in that direction for some time now, then we must simply deal with that truth and its consequences, rather than hiding our heads in the sand. I don't think that it's the case that Johnson, Bork, et. al. attack Darwinism because they know that God doesn't exist, and they wish to conceal that fact, but rather because they fear that others will interpret the truth of Darwinism to mean that religion and morality no longer have any real bearing on human conduct. Thus, Darwinism is attacked as a means of preventing others from taking this truth and using it for bad things.
And that's probably even true - some people will use the truth of Darwinism to argue that religion and conventional morality have no bearing on human conduct, no doubt. But that fact does not, in and of itself, refute the truth of Darwinism - it is, as has been pointed out here and elsewhere, a form of the fallacy of the argument from the consequences. No matter what the perceived effects of the truth of a thing are, the truth of the thing itself is not contingent in any way upon those effects. "Truth" generally implies "consequences", but it is a fallacy to try to turn that around and argue that "consequences" imply "truth"...
I think this depends a great deal on your definition of a "true religion". There are factions throughout the world now that believe they are participating in a true religion, yet are allowing and encouraging incredible evil to be done in the name of "God".