Rory Fitzgerald’s latest rant piece at The Huffington Post is called “Richard Dawkins should be arrested for covering up atheist crimes.” It is, of course, a response to Dawkins’s and Hitchens’s call for legal action against the Pope if His Holiness sets foot in the UK.  Fitzgerald, an Irish journalist, calls himself a “lapsed atheist.”

The piece is completely devoid of intellectual merit, but is worth looking at for a few reasons:

He doesn’t know who Richard Dawkins is. Until yesterday, Fitzgerald’s column identified Dawkins (twice) as a “microbiologist.”

Richard Dawkins has become a sort of Messiah for atheists. He is a microbiologist. I’m not sure why he feels that expertise in such an arcane field gives him authority to pronounce on spiritual questions. But, if microbiologists hold the keys to heaven, people may wish to consider the thoughts of Nobel Prize winning microbiologist Werner Arber, or eminent geneticist, Francis S. Collins, who led the Human Genome Project. Both are believers in God, and both find evidence for the divine in science itself.

After an alert reader pointed out this error, Fitzgerald changed “microbiologist” to “geneticist.” This is also wrong.  Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist.

Its insistence that the crimes of atheist regimes should be laid at the door of atheism, and that Dawkins, by not criticizing these crimes, is complicit in them.

As recently as 1979, the Cambodian genocide killed 1.7 million people. These were murdered by communist atheists. War crimes tribunals are now being set up in Phnomh Penh. I don’t see Dawkins loudly decrying the actions of his atheist colleagues in Cambodia. Why? Because his agenda is not to rail against evil wherever he sees it and to seek objective truth. His agenda is to mock, pillory and destroy the Judaeo-Christian principles and beliefs upon which Western Civilization is founded. Indeed, his ideology ultimately renders discernment of good and evil impossible, subjective and arbitrary. . .

Dawkins imagines that by promoting his grim angry personal philosophy as ultimate truth, and by viciously attacking ancient moral systems, he will bring about some sort of atheist utopia. In doing so, he seeks to magnify wrongs done by religions, and to breeze over the immense horrors brought about by atheist belief systems. You could even say that he is involved in a cover up that would make a Bishop blush: for we have seen what atheist utopias look like: they look like cattle trains rolling in to Belsen with women and children hudding together in the cold.

I don’t have The God Delusion at hand, but I recall that Dawkins did indeed decry the crimes of “atheist regimes.”  Maybe he wasn’t loud enough?  And do we need to once again say that yes, atheist regimes were responsible for horrible acts of genocide, but it’s doubtful at best whether those crimes were done in the name of atheism.  (And of course you can make a good case that Nazis weren’t atheists.)  Dawkins et al. cover this ground amply and I won’t repeat their arguments here.  Finally, atheist “utopias” don’t all look like the Third Reich. What about Sweden and Denmark?

Its criticism of Dawkins and the New Atheists for “militancy” and hostility while at the same time being even more hostile towards atheists. For example, Fitzgerald characterizes the Pol Pot regime as Dawkins’s “atheist colleagues.”  And here’s more:

His particular bile is reserved for the Judaeo-Christian traditions. You will not see him spouting off so vociferously about Mohammed. He is too cowardly for that. . .

He does not conduct the debate about belief in God in a respectful and sincere way. He is himself a narrow-minded fundamentalist who appears to be lacking in some basic human faculties, beyond intellect. He is increasingly redolent of a man with no sense of smell going around shrieking to everyone that their sense of smell is a delusion. Meanwhile, the rest of us get on with smelling the flowers, and the coffee. . .

As the ape-descended Dawkins struts around imagining that he knows the workings of every dimension of an infinitely complex universe from his tiny perch on this speck of a planet, the gods, in which he disbelieves, must be laughing big time.

“Ape-descended Dawkins”?  That’s pretty damn close to how creationists describe evolutionists! If he’s not a complete idiot—and that’s surely a matter for debate—Fitzgerald should recognize that he too descends from an ape (well, an ancient apelike primate).  That aside, this kind of criticism is no different in shrillness, militancy, and lack of “respect” from that of our most outspoken atheist, Christopher Hitchens. It always amuses me when accommodationists unwittingly demonstrate this double standard.  But by all means let them loose the dogs of sarcasm and invective on us.  I am concerned more with ideas than with outspokenness. I don’t criticize Fitzgerald for his tone. I criticize him for his stupidity.  Oh, and he can’t write, either.

You’ll find more of the usual anti-atheist arguments in the column, too, like the assertion that we have no good foundation for morality (“[Dawkins’s] ideology ultimately renders discernment of good and evil impossible, subjective and arbitrary”) and the claim that atheism is ultimately doomed because religious people are outbreeding us.  All good fun!

UPDATE:  Alert reader Barney (see comment #23 below) points out that since this morning Fitzgerald’s piece has undergone some severe pruning.  Barney gives a link to a copy of the original piece, which is here.  And Miranda Hale (comment #27) notes that HuffPo has also changed the title. It used to be “Richard Dawkins Should be Arrested for Covering Up Atheist Crimes,” but the new version is “Should Richard Dawkins be Arrested for Covering Up Atheist Crimes?”

Some bizarre biology for Friday: sexual selection takes many forms, and here’s how it works in the Japanese mudskipper, Periophthalmus modestus:

(Courtesy of the DiscoveryNetwork’s “Life” series)

Ruling on a suit filed by the Freedom from Religion Foundation (yay Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor!), Federal judge Barbara Crabb found that the proclamation of a National Day of Prayer violated the Constitution’s provision for separation of church and state.  Crabb ruled that the official proclamation amounts to a governmental call for religious action.   According to MSNBC:

“It goes beyond mere ‘acknowledgment’ of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function in this context,” Crabb wrote. “In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience.”

But Crabb also says her order does not block any prayer day until after appeals in the case are exhausted.

You can download Crabb’s 66-page opinion here.

But

White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the ruling therefore doesn’t prevent Obama from issuing a Day of Prayer proclamation in May and that the president will do so.

Now I wonder what our conservative Supreme Court will do with this one? I can see Scalia squirming and squinting hard at the Constitution.

Fig. 1.  Judge and Hero Barbara Crabb, who can expect a deluge of hate mail.

NOTE:  This has been updated to the 2022 ranking.  See the link for the new order. 

Here’s US News & World Report’s new list of America’s top ten graduate schools in ecology/evolutionary biology (there are two sets of ties). Chicago has slipped a bit from previous years—we used to be #1 in this category—but I’m glad to see that UC Davis, where I did my postdoc, is way up on the list (I would rank it higher).   For ranking in all sciences, go here.

Fears about kids learning evolution aren’t limited to the Bible Belt. The WestonForum.com, a website for the community of Weston, Connecticut, reports that a local intermediate-school teacher, Mark Tangarone, has prematurely retired after a flap about evolution:

Mr. Tangarone, a 17-year veteran of the Weston school system, claims that a program he wanted to teach about Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln was rejected by the school administration because it involved teaching evolution — the scientific theory that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor.

“I find it hard to believe that in this day and age that a teacher such as myself can be ordered to eliminate the teaching of Darwin’s work and the theory of evolution,” he said.

The school superintendent denies that Tangarone’s resignation is about evolution, maintains that it’s a “personal matter,” and characterizes Tangarone as a “disgruntled employee.”  Tangarone, however, has emails from the school principal that suggest a different story:

In 2008, Mr. Tangarone created a TAG program called “AustralAsia” to celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, who were born on the same day in the same year.

Part of the program involved Darwin’s journey to Australia and Asia, where he discovered natural anomalies such as seashells on mountaintops. Mr. Tangarone said he also planned for a discussion with the students about Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Before implementing the program, Mr. Tangarone submitted an outline to Mark Ribbens, then principal of the intermediate school, for review and approval. (Dr. Ribbens left the school district in 2009.)

In an e-mail to Mr. Tangarone dated Sept. 8, 2008, Dr. Ribbens rejected the basic program, citing for the most part, the teaching of evolution:

“While evolution is a robust scientific theory, it is a philosophically unsatisfactory explanation for the diversity of life. I could anticipate that a number of our parents might object to this topic as part of a TAG project, and further, parents who would object if evolution was part of a presentation by a student to students who do not participate in the TAG program.”

He further stated, “Evolution touches on a core belief — Do we share common ancestry with other living organisms? What does it mean to be a human being? I don’t believe that this core belief is one in which you want to debate with children or their parents, and I know personally that I would be challenged in leading a 10-year-old through this sort of discussion while maintaining the appropriate sensitivity to a family’s religious beliefs or traditions.”

In conclusion, Dr. Ribbens said, “In short, evolution is a topic that is not age appropriate, is not part of our existing curriculum, is not part of the state frameworks at this point in a student’s education, nor a topic in which you have particular expertise. For all of these reasons, the TAG topics need to be altered this year to eliminate the teaching of Darwin’s work and the theory of evolution.”

The students at issue are from the third, fourth, and fifth grade.  And Tangerone “is certified to teach science and social studies for grades K-6. He also has a six-year degree in gifted education.” The website also reports that  “Mr. Tangarone has taught for 33 years, 29 in gifted programs. He has won awards and fellowships for his TAG programs.”

What a loss to the kids and to the school!

Over at Newsweek’s “The Human Condition”, Mary Carmichael dissects the situation (see also her earlier piece on the value of teaching evolution to younger kids), taking issue with the notion of Tangerone as a disgruntled employee:

You know what? I’d be disgruntled, too, if my supervisor told me he was scared to offend people by suggesting that we “share common ancestry with other living organisms”—or that I wasn’t allowed to do my job because he found scientific facts to be “philosophically unsatisfactory.” Surely the most philosophically unsatisfactory action one could take is to deny the truth.

Over at EvolutionBlog, Jason takes up the issue of whether science has anything to say about the supernatural.  An excerpt:

There is a seemingly endless stream of books explaining how to reconcile evolution with Christianity. There would be no reason to write such books if the separation between the natural and the supernatural were as clean as some would like to maintain. The rather large number of people in this country who see a threat to their religious faith from science are not being irrational. They do not need lectures from pompous academics about how they are all mixed up about what their faith requires of them. What they need are good arguments for why they are wrong about the implications of evolution, and they are certainly not getting them from he philosophers and theologians.