I swear, sometimes I think that fellow atheists who want to foster the acceptance of evolution by making nice with religion are completely blinkered. Their goal is to get people to accept any kind of evolution—including that driven or guided by gods—even if it conflicts with the notion of non-theistic and materialistic evolution held by scientists. God made natural selection? That’s fine. God guided the process so that the evolution of god-worshiping humans was inevitable? That’s okay too. God inserted—as Catholic dogma asserts—a soul in the hominin lineage somewhere between Australopithecus and Homo? We’ll just keep quiet on that one.
And although those accommodationists are atheists, presumably aware of the the many destructive aspects of religion, you won’t hear them talking about that. Nor will you hear them admit the obvious fact that the main impediment to accepting evolution in this world is not scientific ignorance, but religion. Every anti-evolutionist I know, with the possible exception of David Berlinski, is motivated at bottom by faith. Instead, faitheists yammer on about how important it is that Americans accept evolution, because otherwise, you know, we’ll fall way behind India and China. (So what?, I ask. A rising tide lifts all boats.) They claim without proof that that evolution-acceptance will come only when atheists shut up about the incompatibility between science and religion, and when we get line with those accommodationists who osculate the rump of faith. They assert that religion will always be with us and it’s useless to fight it—despite the fact that faith has largely disappeared in Europe.
They worry far more about an Alabama schoolchild accepting evolution than about an Afghan girl defaced with acid for daring to attend school at all. For an atheist, that is a clear case of misplaced priorities, and it sickens me.
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