Godless: The Church of Liberalism - Science and Intelligent Design

Science and Intelligent Design

Coulter, citing various critics of evolution and proponents of intelligent design, devotes approximately one-third of the book to attacks on evolution, which Coulter terms "Darwinism." Coulter turned to leading intelligent design proponents for tutors in writing this section of the book: "I couldn't have written about evolution without the generous tutoring of Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and William Dembski…" Behe, Dembski and Berlinski are all fellows of the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement, which Coulter endorses in the book. Chapter 8, "The Creation Myth: On the Sixth Day, God Created Fruit Flies," advances the book's thesis that liberalism is a religion, this time by attempting to show what she argues is its cosmogony. The chapter begins:

Liberals' creation myth is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It's a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist's laboratory or the fossil record—and that's after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn't still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God.

Later in the chapter, she presents a parody—the "Giant Raccoon's Flatulence Theory"—to illustrate what she sees as fallacious arguments of those who espouse the theory of evolution. The "theory" states:

Imagine a giant raccoon passed gas and perhaps the resulting gas might have created the vast variety of life we see on Earth. And if you don't accept the giant raccoon flatulence theory for the origin of life, you must be a fundamentalist Christian nut who believes the Earth is flat.

The imagine, perhaps and might (italicized by Coulter in the book) refer to what she believes is the speculative, mythical, 'made-up-story' nature of the modern evolutionary synthesis theory that species evolved through mutation and non-random selection. Chapter 9, entitled Proof for How the Walkman Evolved into the iPOD by Random Mutation, begins

Darwiniacs do not have a single observable example of one species evolving into another by the Darwinian mechanism of variation and selection. All they have is a story. It is a story that inspires fanatical devotion from the cult simply because their story excludes a creator. They have seized upon something that looks like progress from primitive life forms to more complex life forms and invented a story to explain how the various categories of animals originated. But animal sequences do not prove that the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection caused the similarities. It is just as likely that the similarities are proof of intelligent design, creationism, or the Giant Raccoon's Flatulence theory. The animal-sequence drawings allegedly demonstrating evolution by showing, for example, a little runt horse gradually becoming a grand stallion, are just that: drawings.

To back her opinion, Coulter refers to examples of evolution used in long-standing evolutionary arguments against creationism, but also to examples that were later shown to be misinterpreted, or hoaxes. She presents the Galapagos finches, the peppered moth, Piltdown man, Archaeoraptor, Haeckel's drawings, and the Miller-Urey experiment, as flawed, discredited, or made-up evidence and stating arguments to support her case. While portraying evolution theory as a "religion," Coulter portrays intelligent design as legitimate "science":

Nor are intelligent design scientists looking at things they can't explain: Quite the opposite. They are looking at things they can explain but which Darwin didn't even know about, like the internal mechanism of the cell, and saying, That wasn't created by natural selection—that required high-tech engineering. By contrast, the evolution cult members look at things they can't explain and say, We can't explain it, but the one thing we do know is that there is no intelligence in the universe. It must have been random chance, or it's not 'science'.

The scientific community discounts the claims, such as Coulter's, that the modern evolutionary synthesis lacks scientific rigor, is based on a tautology, or is without experimental or physical proof. The claim that modern evolutionary theory lacks rigor is emphatically rejected by the United States National Academy of Sciences which says that evolution is one of the most thoroughly tested and confirmed theories in science. Coulter's assertion that evolution is based on a "tautology" is also widely considered to be baseless, as are her claims that evolution is without proof. The scientific community also views intelligent design not as a valid scientific theory but as pseudoscience or junk science. The National Academy of Sciences has stated that intelligent design "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions and propose no new hypotheses of their own.

Coulter's reliance on intelligent design and creationist sources for science, has prompted some critics of the intelligent design movement to analyze her claims. PZ Myers, countering Coulter's claim that there is no evidence for the theory of evolution, points to the scientific literature that contains hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of articles about various aspects of evolution. He also argues that Coulter has it backwards: The issue is not whether there is evidence that supports evolution theory, but whether there is evidence that is explained by evolution theory, since theories are explanations for data. In response to Coulter's citing of Jonathan Wells' arguments concerning peppered moth evolution, Ian Musgrave argues that Coulter misrepresents the significance of the peppered moth experiments, makes a number of factual errors, and a "wildly ignorant misrepresentation of evolution." James Downard criticized Coulter's favoring of secondary sources over primary sources, saying "she compulsively reads inaccurate antievolutionary sources and accepts them on account of their reinforcement of what she wants to be true."

Media Matters for America responded to Coulter's "strawman" arguments against evolution by noting 11 types of "distortions" in her writing and going into detail explaining why her claims are false and contrary to science. A satirical account of Coulter's take on evolution was written by probabilist Peter Olofsson, whose tongue-in-cheek argument was that Coulter had in fact written a veiled criticism of the intelligent design movement, much like Alan Sokal did to the postmodern movement in his famous hoax.