Dear editor,

In “The Collapse of Reason,” Cathy Young agrees with leading liberal intellectual Todd Gitlin who believes “the academic left is making itself irrelevant by embracing ideological extremism and trying to purge its ranks of those who are not politically correct.” It’s a shame, then, that Young herself characterizes those who see evidence for intelligent design as religiously motivated right wing nuts, and in her own collapse of reason, provides no evidence for her position.

The situation is more complex than she realizes. For instance, the response to question seven of a recent poll by the decidedly non-evangelical Finkelstein Institute found that 32% of Jewish doctors, 78% of Catholic doctors, 54% of Hindu doctors, 43% of Buddhist doctors, and 48% of doctors who characterized themselves as “Spiritual but no organized religion” favored an explanation for human origins that involved intelligent design over the Darwinian model of evolution without intelligent guidance. The poll merely confirms what most people consider obvious, a truth the mandarins of political correctness on the left have assiduously denied — highly educated people across the political and religious spectrum, from the Enlightenment to the present, see strong evidence for intelligent design in the natural world.

Jonathan Witt

Fact-checking information: Here is the link to the Finkelstein poll. Click on Q7 in the left-hand margin: “What are your views on the origin and development of human beings?” The third answer represents the Darwinian view of undirected evolution by natural selection. The other two answers each involve creative input from an intelligent designer. For instance, the second answer, “God initiated and guided an evolutionary process that has led to current human beings” represents the position of leading intelligent design proponent and Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, author Darwin’s Black Box, a person who is clearly not a neo-Darwinist.

The poll’s first question pitted generic evolution against intelligent design and still came up with 34% of doctors rejecting modern evolutionary theory. In question 7, where doctors were allowed to distinguish between undirected evolution (as in the case of neo-Darwinian evolution) and intelligently guided evolution, it becomes clear that a distinct majority of doctors reject neo-Darwinism’s story of human origins by mindless evolution.

To join the list of medical doctors skeptical of neo-Darwinism, go here.