Surely not

In a spectacular profile of Christopher Hitchens (sadly not available online), the New Yorker has this to say about his brother Peter, the British columnist. Peter is

a churchgoer who is unpersuaded by Darwin

Somebody please tell me that this isn't true.

Comments

[David White]

Well, sadly it's true. I noted it down with scorn in my blog on March 27th 2006:

Hitchens "dropped a particularly alarming few words of defence for 'intelligent design' into his column in the Mail on Sunday (only circumstantially my reading material this weekend, I feel bound to assure you). Apparently, "lots of lies are told about the 'Intelligent Design' movement, a modest, science-based attack on Darwin's theory of evolution. I suspect it will survive. But could that theory of evolution survive in its current exalted state if it were properly and honestly taught in the schools? It is time that it was".

Whether he means this or not, who knows?

[JA]

So what if he does? Many people do. And of course 'Darwin' has become a by-word for something which Darwin really didn't do, and wasn't trying to do. Read 'The Origin of Species', especially the last few pages. Darwin doesn't destroy faith - and doesn't think his own theories do - but that they explain the workings of God and his created world. Essentially, I mean to say, Darwin admits and celebrates that his theories do not (and cannot) complete the final step in an explanation of why the world is as it is and where it came from.

[Mandarin Orange]

So, the question has to be, Danny, if somneone set up a "faith school" with Creationism "woven into the curriculum" (and neglecting Darwinism), would you be happy for your taxes to pay for it? I mean really?

[Peter Risdon]

I had this from his own lips during a telephone conversation last March, when I was trying to get him to join his brother Christopher in supporting the rally for free expression that was held in Trafalgar Square. I suggested that Darwin and Galileo had both caused religious offence in their time and that such was not a valid ground for censorship or suppression. He interrupted to say that Darwinism is not science because it involves processes that cannot be observed, unlike, say gravitational attraction and the movement of celestial bodies. Darwinism - or rather, evolution - might be what is happening, but it isn't science, it is rather an article of faith just like creationism.

Of course, this isn't true, evolutionary processes have been observed, and what is more the same argument can be made to object to a great deal of, er... science (geology, particle physics and so on).

[Rowan Lubbock]

So it's highly irrational for some third-rate journalist to negate the cornerstone of biological understanding, but perfectly rational if the leader of the 'free world' does the same?

[Miamomimi]

Peter Hitchens can be highly irrational, but he's not a third rate journalist.