Time Magazine – Scum of the Week

It was awfully nice of Time Magazine to choose Richard Dawkins to be one of the Times 100 . Apparently they thought it was too nice.

That’s why they chose Michael Behe to write the article. Yes – that Michael Behe,

Of Richard Dawkins’ nine books, none caused as much controversy or sold as well as last year’s The God Delusion. The central idea—popular among readers and deeply unsettling among proponents of intelligent design like myself—is that religion is a so-called virus of the mind, a simple artefact of cultural evolution, no more or less meaningful than eye color or height.

It is a measure of the artful way Dawkins, 66, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, tells a tale and the rigor he brings to his thinking that even those of us who profoundly disagree with what he has to say can tip our hats to the way he has invigorated the larger debate.

Dawkins had a mild Anglican youth but at 16 discovered Charles Darwin and believed he’d found a pearl of great price. I believe his new book follows much less from his data than from his premises, and yet I admire his determination. Concerning the big questions, the Bible advises us to be hot or cold but not lukewarm. Whatever the merit of his ideas, Richard Dawkins is not lukewarm.

Uh. Time. Was this really necessary? I’m not exactly a Richard Dawkins fan boy but still. Could you have picked someone marginally neutral. You know like Paula Zahn?

Of course they seem to always try to find someone from the ‘Dark Side’ to write these things. That way they don’t end up being too glowing. But still – Michael Behe?

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