I just posted this comment on one of Denyse O’Leary’s blogs, where, instead of providing her own usual antiscientific tirade, she reproduced one in the form of a dialogue between Phillip Johnson and Casey Luskin. The claim that was being made was that those who say evolution and faith are compatible are falling for a trojan horse scam which will eventually undermine their faith.
Here’s what I wrote to her, and since I would like to those involved in the dialogue reproduced there to hear it too, and since I doubt the comment will actually appear on the blog, I’m reproducing it here, and invite anyone involved in promoting Intelligent Design to respond to it as they see fit, whether here or elsewhere:
Claims to Biblical literalism result in more people losing their faith than evolution ever will. Countless preachers tell the faithful that either the Bible is completely without error, or you may as well throw it away. When they can’t keep denying there are errors, they do what they were told to, and throw it away.
In the same way, people like you cause more people to lose their faith (or to not come to faith) than any Darwinian biologist ever could. You tell people evolution is nonsense and present it as incompatible with faith, and some people who don’t know any better actually believe you. Then when eventually the mountain of evidence finally gets their attention, they lose their faith, because people like you told them that was the only other option.
Do you fear God? If so, do you think you will not be held accountable for putting unnecessary stumbling blocks in the way of the faithful and those who could believe if it weren’t for people like you driving them away from God?
I know this is a harsh way to speak. But their hypocrisy must be challenged. To claim that evolution undermines values and to use dishonesty to combat it is hypocrisy. To combat evolution on the grounds that it destroys faith, while promoting fundamentalism which does at least as good a job, is hypocrisy. That they won’t listen to scientists I can just barely understand, even if disagree with their doing so. But why don’t more Christians notice that these cdesign proponentsists won’t listen to Jesus either?
O’Leary and Behe are perhaps the most culpable: in addition to ignoring Jesus and ignoring scientists, they are also Catholics who ignore what the Pope had to say about evolution.
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