If we accept Steve Neumann’s “Atheist Positivity Challenge,” and refrain from going after the “low-hanging Christians” (i.e., megachurch pastors, Ken Ham, etc.) for a month, can we still criticize atheists? Even the low-hanging ones, like Andrew Brown?

I will make this short: Brown has embarrassed himself again at the Guardian (that’s equivalent to saying, “Andrew Brown has posted again at the Guardian“)—this time with a piece called “Why creationism matters—and irks so many people.”  In it, he tries to figure out why people are so down on creationism but not on other equal bits of nonsense, like homeopathy or climate-change denialism, that are far more harmful. Indeed, I myself have pointed out that creationism is one of the lesser irrationalities of both religion and faith-based pseudoscience like homeopathy. But Brown mucks up what could have been a good piece for another journalist, for he has to get in some osculations of religion and criticism of anti-creationists —even though he’s one himself.

Here’s the format of a typical Brown piece.

I. Simple declarative sentences outlining his topic.
II. A bunch of waffling and incoherent prose that have nothing to do with his topic.
III. A conclusion that doesn’t have to do with his topic but sucks up to religion or attacks atheists.

Indeed, that’s the format here:

I. His thesis statement:

Why does creationism matter so much? Scientifically, of course, it’s nonsense. Evolution is actually true. But why should this particular bit of nonsense get so many people so very upset?

II. The questions are good ones, and he does make some stabs at answering it, but then gets lost in a thread about cultural relativism and the “fragile collective enterprise of civilization.” But, to give him credit, he does cut close to the bone when he says:

[Rejecting creationism above other inanities] is also attractive to everyone who supposes that we will all in time grow out of religion, and even grow out of the desires and perspectives from which religion springs.

For these people, Darwinian evolution comes freighted with moral meaning: it is the knife that cuts our last bonds to childishness and faith. To reject it is then especially immoral in a way that disbelieving or misunderstanding quantum physics wouldn’t be.

Brown doesn’t say whether he’s one of “these people,” but I doubt it.

But the concentration of vocal atheists on creationism might also have something to do with the fact that many who attack creationism are evolutionists, like Dawkins and I, or scientists in other fieldds, like the late Victor Stenger and Ken Miller.  We happen to have public voices, and we don’t know a lot about homeopathy or astrology.But of course there is a whole genre of people on the internet who attack noncreationist pseudoscience and spiritual medicine: Science Based Medicine and Doubtful News, to name but two.

Still, because creationism, unlike homeopathy or astrology, rests on religion, and because its embrace is critical to many people’s religious belief, it’s an especially tempting target for secularists. Many people have said that they lost their faith after they came to see evolution as true. But my own attacks on creationism come from another motive: evolution is true and, when properly understood, is simply fantastic. To think that simple, naturalistic processes can mold complex organisms like the bucket orchid or complex behaviors like the honeybee dance is almost beyond belief. I, for one, would like to infect people with that sense of wonder, and of course that has been Dawkins’s main goal throughout his life, as evidenced by the title of his autobiography. Dispelling homeopathy is best done by doctors like Orac, and astrology by skeptics like Sharon Hill.

But then, as always Brown goes off the rails, for he says that disbelief in evolution doesn’t really matter. Here’s how he ends, not with a bang but some wet osculations of spirituality:

III. Brown (my emphasis)

But the interesting thing about some research presented at the weekend by Amy Unsworth of the Faraday Institute, is that it suggests that most people who reject evolution don’t think it matters much either way. The overwhelming majority of those who think that science and religion are incompatible are not believers but atheists. Very few English people who identify as creationists believe in a young earth: this is partly because most are Muslims, and Muslim creationism has no strong attachment to a literal reading of the Genesis story. For most people, creationism is not a biological explanation, but an assertion that there is something special about humans which sets us apart from all other animals. We are the only species that can argue about creationism or conceive of God.

This doesn’t mean that evolution is false, or that there needs to be a supernatural explanation for supernatural belief. But a completely naturalistic account of how spirituality arose in the world can’t say anything about what spirituality might reveal. Eyes also have evolved but that doesn’t mean there is nothing to see.

He couldn’t help himself. Literally—for, like the rest of us, he has no free will, and his brain is wired up to purse his lips every time he approaches the rump of faith.

But really, Brown is talking about England; what he says is certainly not true of America, where creationism is a much bigger problem than it is in Britain. Most creationists in the US are young-earth creationists, especially when it comes to humans. And that “something special” that sets humans apart is frequently a quasi-biological claim: the claim that evolution could not explain things like human consciousness or morality. To argue that those have been inserted by God is indeed a scientific claim. Contra Brown, they are biological “explanations.” In fact, most people who do accept evolution in the US (about two-thirds of them) believe that God did intervene in the process at some point. Such people are creationists in an important sense creationists, for they don’t fully accept naturalistic evolution, and require God’s intervention in the process.

And if most British evolution-denialists are Muslims, as Brown says, then they reject human evolution because the Qur’an, their own scripture, tells them that Allah created humans as a special act. Lots of Muslims have no problem with evolution—except when it comes to humans. Their human exceptionalism is a scientific claim, and a false one.

The worst part is the last two sentences, where Brown touts “what spirituality might reveal.” What does he mean? Does it reveal truths about the universe? If so, what are they? Or do they reveal things similar to what my own “spiritual” experience of taking LSD in college showed: the Big Truth that “the walls are fucking brown!”

So do tell us, Mr. Brown: what IS there to see when we adopt the spirituality you’re touting?

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You are probably asking yourself, “Professor Ceiling Cat, why do you bother attacking this mushbrained columnist?” My answer is the same one that George Mallory gave when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. The difference between Mallory and me is that I wind up on top.

And for those British readers who ask this question, I respond with my own: “Why haven’t you people gotten rid of Andrew Brown yet?”