Battleangel

A good rebuttal of the silly and intellectually lazy intelligent design / creationist claims as they have been brought up again by the cesspool that is America’s perhaps most well known pundit, Ann Coulter. As vile as some may think Coulter is, this time she has trespassed on really dangerous grounds where she could do some real damage and as such needs to be met with all necessary force. The usual death threats and libel are cute and harmless by comparison, and this sort of professional disinformation may have serious consequences in the current scientific climate in the US where science itself, ostensibly the basis for the modern society, hangs in the balance.

In her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Crown Forum, June 2006), right-wing pundit Ann Coulter devotes two chapters to a bizarre attempt to disprove the theory of evolution. With a mix of misleading claims, pseudo-scientific arguments, distortions of evolutionary theory, and outright falsehoods, Coulter places herself not only outside the mainstream but truly toward the lunatic fringe. After all, no reasonable person argues that one cannot believe in God and simultaneously accept the findings of decades of accumulated research on evolution. Yet, Coulter appears to believe that in order to prove that liberals are “godless,” she must attack evolutionary theory itself.

The funniest thing about the ‘Flatulent Raccoon Theory’ of course is that it, like Creationism itself, or indeed the ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ it suggests a central creator figure. So, basically, if Coulter really believes in some form of Creationism (though most likely she is just an attention-whore) she is in fact lampooning her own beliefs without realizing it. But then again, it takes a dull mind to champion bizarre and backward ideas in the first place.