Gregg Easterbrook is a scientific lightweight with a long, long history of goofy ideas; an apologist for religion and Intelligent Design creationism, and a shill for the Discovery Institute. He apparently has written well-regarded columns on football, but when it comes to science, his credibility is on the negative side of the number line. One of the characteristics of the incompetent, though, is that they do not recognize their own failings, so once again Easterbrook sallies forth, this time against Richard Dawkins. It’s the nut against the nutcracker; the outcome is foreordained.

My personal position on Dawkins is somewhat complicated. I think he is definitely one of the best writers on our side of the argument; I think he is largely in the right on much of the science; I also think he is regrettably neglectful of development’s role in evolution, which biases his thinking in ways that don’t align with my biases; and I think he is dead-on target in his criticisms of religion’s effect on society. I’m a bit different than many, who seem to think his description of science is exactly right and wish he’d shut up about religion: I think his science lacks some significant nuances, and want him to continue to speak out with vigor and clarity on the affliction of fundamentalism.

Easterbrook, of course, is outraged at the arrogance of the damned atheist.

Don’t take this personally, but if you are an American adult there is a one in two chance that Richard Dawkins, a renowned professor of science at Oxford, thinks you are “ignorant, stupid or insane,” unless you are “wicked.” These are the adjectives Dawkins chooses to describe the roughly 100 million Americans adults who, if public opinion polls are right, believe Homo sapiens was created directly by God, rather than gradually by evolution. Ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked. Not much to choose from there!

Mr Easterbrook is a bit behind the times. Dawkins wrote that in a book review in 1989—in the New York Times, April 9, 1989—and it has been hashed over for years. The important point, of course, is that contrary to Easterbrook’s claim that there isn’t much to choose from, that list actually covers the whole wide range of possibilities. Dawkins himself goes on to explain that the stupid, insane or wicked are the minority possibilities, but let’s be honest and face the facts: if you are a creationist, you are almost certainly deeply ignorant of biology. Easterbrook seems to have actually gotten the quote from Dawkins’ defense of the statement, but doesn’t seem to have comprehended any of the surrounding words.

The gist of Easterbrook’s complaint is that Dawkins is “arrogant”, which seems to mean that he forcefully and plainly states the facts and evidence and logic of his case, and that those facts don’t leave much wiggle room for the evolution deniers.

Which brings us to the first problem with Dawkins’s positions: he is arrogant. It’s one thing to say that the other side is wrong—maybe there’s no divine, believers may turn out wrong—and quite another to denounce the other side as ignorant, stupid, insane and so worthless its arguments should not even be heard. (Sorry, I left out wicked.) Saying the other side’s argument should not be heard is at best plugging your fingers into your ears, at worst the instinct to suppress free thought; it’s amazing to hear a tenured Oxford don essentially calling for intellectual restrictions.

Two points. 1) When all the facts are on your side, when the opposition relies on hiding, misrepresenting, or outright lying about the evidence, it is intellectual dishonesty to say anything less than that the they are wrong. No “maybes”, no fuzzy excuses, no bending over backward to give charitable interpretations of lunacy—the right thing to do is to squash it down hard. Dawkins is extremely good at that, and I applaud him for it. The soapy concessions and overly generous apologetics for creationism that we get in the media are exactly the reason it thrives, not because scientists are too in-your-face for our faint-hearted public. The American public avidly, even joyously revels in the uncompromising (and entirely false) bravado of our media’s Bill O’Reillys and Ann Coulters…and the intelligent and well-spoken words of Richard Dawkins send them into self-righteous fury? Get real.

2) Easterbrook claims that Dawkins thinks the other side should not even be heard. This is false. All he provides to support that claim is that Dawkins did try to block the establishment of an endowed chair of theology at Cambridge. Good for him, I’d put up the same fight…and not because the public should not hear about it, but because the public already hears far too much about religion, and it’s not the place for an institution dedicated to higher learning to also spread the gospel of religious dogma. Given that Easterbrook has actually read Dawkins’ writing on the subject, we can exclude ignorance; on what shall we blame this misrepresentation, then—stupidity, insanity, or wickedness?

Easterbrook carries this rhetorical dishonesty further.

Dawkins uses sleight of hand when he tries to suggest that anyone who doubts any aspect of evolutionary thought, including the chance creation of life, is the sort of extremist who thinks all the different Galapagos finches came fully formed directly from the Garden of Eden. You can accept the basic notion of evolution and still have real questions about why the gift of life exists—witness Fred Hoyle, a highly accomplished modern scientist who did just that.

Speaking of sleight of hand…Dawkins is speaking specifically of creationists who deny the well-established evidence, not well-informed peers who argue about legitimate issues within biology. There are open questions and there is doubt and debate within those areas; Easterbrooks claim that his target is “anyone who doubts any aspect of evolutionary thought” is an amazing fib.

(It’s also weird that he trots out Hoyle as an example, who may have been a great astronomer, but on the subject of evolution, he was loopy as a fruitbat.)

Read Dawkins’ original comment in context, and Easterbrook’s dishonesty is even more apparent. Does this sound like a jeremiad against any doubt of any aspect of evolutionary thought?

So to the book’s provocation, the statement that nearly half the people in the United States don’t believe in evol