In reading Dinesh D’Souza’s WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT CHRISTIANITY, I was surprised at how uncritical and historically uninformed is his view of evolution. For instance, he lumped C. S. Lewis with other notable 20th century Christian intellectuals as accepting evolutionary theory, but in fact toward the end of his life, Lewis regretted his earlier support for evolution (go here).
With even less apparent knowledge of his subject, D’Souza is now weighing in against intelligent design:
The Failure of “Intelligent Design”
Posted Mar 31st 2008 9:38AM by Dinesh D’Souza
Filed under: Science, Christianity, Atheism. . . Today some Christians may be heading down the same path with their embrace of “intelligent design” or ID. This movement is based on the idea that Darwinian evolution is not only flawed but basically fraudulent. ID should not, however, be confused with bible-thumping six-day creationism. It does not regard the earth as 6,000 years old. Its leading advocates are legal scholar Phillip Johnson, biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician David Berlinski, and science journalist Jonathan Wells. Berlinski has a new book out The Devil’s Advocate that makes the remarkable claim that “Darwin’s theory of evolution has little to contribute to the content of the sciences.” Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled” provides horror stories to show that the case for ID as well as critiques of evolution from an ID perspective are routinely excluded or censored in the halls of academe.
ID advocates have sought to convince courts to require that their work be taught alongside Darwinian evolution, yet such efforts have been resoundingly defeated. Why has the ID legal strategy proven to be such a failure, even at the hands of conservative judges? Imagine that a group of advocates challenged Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity. Let’s say that this group, made up of a law professor, a couple of physicists, several journalists, as well as some divinity school graduates, flatly denies Einstein’s proposition that e=mc2.
How would a judge, who is not a physicist, resolve the group’s demand for inclusion in the physics classroom? He would summon a wide cross-section of leading physicists. They would inform him that despite unresolved debates about relativity–for example, its unexplained relationship to quantum theory–Einstein’s theories are supported by a wide body of data. They enjoy near-unanimous support in the physics community worldwide. There is no alternative scientific theory that comes close to explaining the facts at hand. In such a situation any judge would promptly show the dissenters the door and deny their demand for equal time in the classroom. This is precisely the predicament of the ID movement. . . .
What an incredible comparison. D’Souza here gives no evidence of knowing even the rudiments of the debate over ID — he merely repeats the worst propaganda against ID. I encourage anyone who has personal contact with him to provide him with better information. A point of leverage is that D’Souza presumably wants Christians, many of whom support ID, to buy his book.