Saturday, December 30, 2006

Peter, (un)principled

I see, (via Geoff Coupe) that Peter Hitchens has been talking nonsense again, this time under the cover of calling for 'open-minded debate'.

Once again, it's about evolution and creationism (masquerading, as has now become typical, as something more scientific-sounding called intelligent design theory), about which our Peter deludes himself there is a debate worth having.

Fortunately, Jason Rosenhouse takes him to task.

Dr. Rosenhouse, however, is a bit too generous when he speculates that Hitchens, before writing his piece, might have thought along these lines:
I certainly can't endorse creationism or ID. I mean, those guys are just nuts. Don't want to be associated with them. How about if I just tell everyone to be open-minded and skeptical? That could work.
No: as far as I know Peter Hitchens has never shied away from asserting arguments which are 'just nuts'.

But otherwise, a fine response. Thank you, Dr. Rosenhouse.

For something more compelling than Peter Hitchens's little intervention, take a few minutes to consider this quite wonderful depiction of evolution narrated by Carl Sagan (from Cosmos, via fellow Carl Sagan blog-a-thon contributor andy69):

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