Quodlibeta

The Kansas school board row made it on to the BBC this morning, and into the Guardian (the newspaper of the liberal left in the UK and read by most people who work at the BBC). Here's the Guardian's story.

Let me say from the outset that I do not believe Intelligent Design is correct as usually stated. But I also find the attitude towards it by the secular media to be fundamentally dishonest. The stories simply assume that there is some great battle between science and religion going on here. While it is true that some atheists try to milk science for their own faith (Dawkins, Atkins and others spring to mind), it is the ultimate irony that their propaganda is believed to actually represent the views of Christians. The battle over evolution does not impact on other areas of science and there is no great conflict here between faith and reason. What we have is a few foolish atheists who have tainted evolution with their own prejudices and then pretend shock that it has made Christians suspicious of the subject.

The best thing that could happen for evolution is for prominent atheists to admit "When we said evolution and God were incompatible, we were wrong. We admit this and apologise for misleading the public." Only then might it be possible to undo the damage. Many people will continue to believe the Genesis story, which is their right. But once the link between atheism and evolution was broken, the hostility which exists at the moment would cool down and rows like that in Kansas would fade away.