There's usually no point in piling on when the minions of the ID movement get their just deserts after some typically brainless culture-war test launch. Consider the responses (by, most notably, Ian Musgrave at the Panda's Thumb) to the most recent rendition of the ID movement's hilariously idiotic fixation on a particular computer program written by Richard Dawkins. It seems there is little to add.
I've mentioned before that we've had an intelligent design proponent (code named Timaeus) as an official guest on the ASA email list. The discussion has been mostly useful. One thing that became clear early on was the fact that Timaeus is not a scientist and has not read much science outside of the works of ID defenders.
It is understandably typical for Christians to consider evolution as something that confronts and challenges faith. To say that North American evangelicals consider evolution to be largely incompatible with Christian belief is to state the painfully obvious.
About 2 months ago, I finished a series on Michael Behe's latest book, The Edge of Evolution. I concluded that it was a terrible book, displaying significant errors of both fact and judgment. The book's main argument is a population genetics argument, and Behe seems to have little knowledge or understanding of that difficult subject.
In a previous post, I started to explain a fact that some people (who don't know me) seem to find surprising or noteworthy. Michael Behe is a Christian who accepts common ancestry and an ancient cosmos, so you'd think I would be excited about the work of a fellow "theistic evolutionist." But I'm not. Two overall problems come to mind.
In The Edge of Evolution, Michael Behe presents arguments against the role of random mutation in large-scale evolutionary change, using probability calculations that are so utterly mishandled that they call into question his scientific credibility and integrity.
Well, I guess I should start with some contrition. I have gotten cheap laughs referring to Richard Dawkins as an idiot, such that students of mine have twice referred to him simply as 'The Idiot,' knowing they'd be perfectly well understood.