What's best strategy for defending evolution?

Michael Ruse writes:I think that you and Richard [Dawkins] are absolute disasters in the fight against intelligent design - we are losing this battle, not the least of which is the two new supreme court justices who are certainly going to vote to let it into classrooms - what we need is not knee-jerk atheism but serious grappling with the issues - neither of you are willing to study Christianity seriously and to engage with the ideas - it is just plain silly and grotesquely immoral to claim that Christianity is simply a force for evil, as Richard claims - more than this, we are in a fight, and we need to make allies in the fight, not simply alienate everyone of good will.

Jason Rosenhouse writes:Now, I happen to share Dennett's and Dawkins' contemptuos attitude towards Christianity, but that's not the part I want to comment on. Rather, I want to challenge this idea that the atheism of Dawkins and Dennett hurts the cause of promoting quality science education.This assertion is frequently made but it is never backed up with anything. Is it really true that the strident atheism of people like Dennett and Dawkins negatively influences the way people look at evolution? If that's true, it certainly paints a bleak picture of many religious people. If I argued that I would be symapthetic to evolution, except that I see people like Ken Miller, John Haught and Simon Conway Morris drawing theistic conclusions from it, I don't think Ruse would show me much respect. After all, evolution should sink or swim on the basis of the relevant evidence. If that evidence is strong, it should not matter what Dawkins or Dennett (or Haught or Miller or Conway Morris) thinks.Arguing that strident atheism hurts the cause is remarkably condescending towards religious people. It's saying that they are too emotional to understand and think seriously about the evidence. It's saying that those people can't be expected to provide an honest assessment of the evidence because mean old Richard Dawkins made a snide remark about their religious views.

PZ Myers writes:Bravo. Ruse is echoing a common tendency, the habit of trying to hide away the atheists on the side of evolution”it's also represented by that common adjective, "strident". You can't be a plain-spoken advocate for common sense and the avoidance of absurd superstitions, no matter how hallowed by time and tradition, without getting called "strident", "dogmatic", and "fundamentalist" over and over again, as well as being told, in more or less these words, to sit down and shut up and quit scaring away the rubes . while every scientist who makes room in his head for a little credulity towards ancient myths is treated as a special gift to the cause of reason. It's extraordinarily irritating. Can we get a little consistency, please?We need more atheists speaking out”that's how we're going to get people used to the fact that we exist. The fact that we are content to work with the religious, while many of the religious will not reciprocate that tolerance and even some of our fellow scientists want to hide us away, is a good example of who is holding the moral high ground here, and Ruse's condemnation is yet another reason why I don't hold much respect for the guy.

Chris Mooney writes:First, let's tackle the assertion that there's no evidence that attacking religion hurts the pro-evolution cause. Hmm...let's just say that Rosenhouse is perhaps not thinking creatively enough. Maybe such evidence does exist, but there are good reasons for keeping it out of the public arena, no? Or, maybe such evidence doesn't exist but that's because it isn't needed--i.e., it's obvious that attacking religion is divisive and not helpful to the cause of promoting the teaching of evolution.More interesting is the second argument here: Those who claim that attacks on religion undermine science education are demeaning the intelligence of religious folk, says Rosenhouse, by suggesting they can't look dispassionately at scientific evidence when their faith is under fire. Not exactly: If anything, we're demeaning the intelligence of everyone, whether religious or otherwise. What we're saying is that people rarely make up their minds solely on the basis of evidence; all sorts of subtle cues, prejudices, and societal factors condition their responses to political issues (an assertion, by the way, which is backed by loads of evidence).In this situation, one of the strongest societal cues we have to deal with--a cue coming out of countless churches--is the contention that evolution kills God, therefore evolution can't be right. I don't care if it's rational or not, it's strongly believed. If people are told they must choose between evolution and their faith, guess which one is going to get pitched in the garbage?That's the real hurdle here, and that's precisely what Dawkins and Dennett don't help us to overcome.