Upon reading this article I was tickled much in the same way as I am when watching its author deliver scathingly humorous commentaries on YouTube. Sadly, I reached a horrific "facepalm" moment when I came across the word "Darwinism". Perhaps it's not the worst crime one can commit, but it is granting unnecessary fodder to those relegating evolution to the realm of "Only a theory." Those who love to claim that believe in evolution requires as much faith as does believe in a deity. To be clear, I don't believe in Darwin any more than I feel someone else should believe in Jesus Christ, whatever believing in a person may mean. In fact, I agree with much of what Jesus Christ is claimed to have said despite not placing him as the son of God or affiliating myself as one of his followers. I believe in what Darwin (In part) discovered, and respect him greatly for doing so. However, my allegiance is, at best, to my own ability to rationalize and apply the scientific method to my perception of the world or to interpret the information presented me on the same, and not to some man long since passed away.

I would think that Hitch, familiar with watching his own Trotskyist ideals fade before him, would think wiser than to put such power in a name or man rather than the process of thinking or hard evidence which has resulted in the best possible explanation of our world as we know it. Darwinism is for the religious rebel, a fad for the so-called "back-slid". I am an atheist, a secularist, or if you must a PEARList, long before I would subscribe to the notion of me bowing before a copy of On The Origin of Species in an incense filled room.

In honor of the recently televised world gymnastics championships, I suppose that's a 9.5 this time, Hitch. Excellent routine, fabulous dismount, a little shoddy on the landing.

Leemute, what is the evidence that macroevolution of man from an ancient primate is definitive?

Im familiar with the various 'missing links' that pop culture claims and some used to exclaim existed, but what is the conclusive evidence that the fossils or bones of ancient primates are the ancestors of man, rather than of a fellow hominid such as neanderthal or homo erectus?

I agree with the scientific usefulness of evolutionary theory in biological sciences, but its not sufficient as a universal explanation or ideological foundation for the origin of man. But as a believer, you must believe in the dialectic materialism origin of man as well, yes?

In defense of Hitchens, calling someone a Darwinist doesn't suggest in the least they worship Darwin ... you can be a Lamarckian without holding Lamarck in the slightest esteem. You just subscribe to the same view.

I realize. But as I said, I've heard a lot of Creationists use that term pejoratively, thinking that it aides their argument that believing in Evolution is a faith-based event.

I appreciate the response.

Usama3,

If you accept "microevolution" then you must accept the "macro-" for they are the same thing. Evolution builds over time in tiny steps as is verifiable--not only with bacteria, but also with different fishes, birds, and reptiles.

My confidence that the evolutionary process has had as much time to yield Homo Erectus is the due to my understanding of geometric dating, radiometric dating, and molecular dating. Still, I am comfortable to have that confidence shook by any new and apparently more correct information.

The idea that ARDI and Lucy are "links" is fine, only when taken into account that so are we, as is any other organism alive today. The notion of a missing link is a horribly mistaken one which shouldn't exist. It shows, at best, a misunderstanding of Evolution, and at worst a blatant disregard for so much which has been discovered. That we have fossils at all is a wonderful BONUS. Proof for evolution need no lie in that.

Still, none of this is necessary for me not to believe in a god of some sort, and I would wager that accepting these scientific principles, facts, and theories is far less dangerous than believing--and acting upon the belief--of anything found in an ancient tribal script.

I'll concede to not knowing much about dialectic materialism, but I tend to agree with Gould's comments on what I have read about it.

Sorry to jump in uninvited ... But when you assert that 'missing links' is a mistaken notion based on misunderstanding you're perhaps only half right ... perhaps it arose that way, but creationists hold that there are natural kinds separated by gaps that indicate either special creation or evolution by non-gradual, intelligent designer aided leaps. It's question begging to preclude them from argument.

No problem.

Not everything a creationist believes is faith-based, and not everything an evolutionist believes is evidence based ... unless you hold that just adopting the explanatory scheme raises the subjective probability of every event past some trivial level at which accepting it is pure or blind faith.

I think the problem with "Darwinism" is not the risk of it being sounding Darwin-worshipping but is more the case that Darwinian evolution is outdated in the way that the Rutherfordian or Plum-Pudding models of atomic structure are outdated. In the end though, evolution insofar as it is projected backward can only be a model, which scientists attempt to make more internally rigorous and consistent with experimentation in the present.

@leemute, microevolution does not necessarily insure processes of macroevolution, not all qualities can be reduced to qualities, though @tracker, your point about the arbitrariness of gaps is well taken. In any case, one could also accept macroevolution in theory, but still hold a ~6,000 year-old earth belief which makes macroevolution unacceptable in practice. That is, experimental evidence of evolution does not necessarily require one to give it much more status as an origin of life than any other internally consistent theory, belief, or myth.

foobar:

[N]ot all qualities can be reduced to qualities...

Eh? I assume this is a typo. As to whether qualities can be reduced to quantities, they most certainly can. Each quality can be reduced to a number of genes, or base pairs if you want something easier to quantify. A shift in a single base pair, according to anti-evolutionists, is "microevolution," but a shift in a number of base pairs is... "macroevolution"? And the anti-evolutionists tell us that one is possible, but one is not? Where is the internal logic to this? What if I told you that I believed in the "theory of breaking bones," (i.e., bones -- like -- DNA, may be structurally compromised) but only as it applies to one bone. A single broken bone? Yes!Multiple broken bones? Impossible, you can't break more than one bone!

At one point to single gene or base pair changes become impermissible according to the anti-evolution crowd? It boggles the mind.

Isn't the idea, not to speak for foo, that there's some sort of "variability envelope" around various kinds of animals such that breeding them in one or another direction results in sterility, and when directional breeding ceases, the population tends to reestablish itself? I don't know whether leaving all dogs alone would result in a gradual change back to all canines being wolves, but I think that's the idea. (I'm really just guessing at the view since I haven't read it in detail anywhere and heard about it second hand.)