Lying for Darwin
Over the past couple of months at Jerry Coyne’s blog, Why Evolution Is True, he
and Matthew Cobb have written several blog posts attacking Stephen Meyer’s Signature
in the Cell — by my count, five
posts. The most recent by Coyne accuses
Meyer of dishonesty:
Meyer does not mean well. He is spreading lies and confusing people
by distorting real science. Is that the unfortunate result of “meaning well”? Do
you think that because somebody is a “Christian brother,” he’s incapable of
lying for Jesus?
Isn’t it strange, though, that for all the persistent
attacks on Meyer, in quite personal terms, Professor Coyne hasn’t dared to
actually read Steve’s book? That’s obvious because Coyne’s throwaway summary of
its contents — Signature “maintains
that cells must have been designed by God because they’re too complex to have
evolved” — is an absurd misrepresentation. Even someone who had only read
reviews of the book would know as much. Has Coyne in fact read the critical
review of Signature, by Darrel Falk, on
which he bestows approval? Or Meyer’s
detailed response to Falk, which Coyne dismisses as “more of the same ID
pap”? Unless he’s a very poor reader — and being a professor at the University
of Chicago would presumably indicate otherwise — you do get the strong
impression that he’s commenting upon a bunch of writing by other people without
having read it, certainly not with any care. Maybe he’s too busy playing with
his cats that he makes so much of on his blog. Or maybe he’s sloppy. This is
the same Dr. Coyne who earlier characterized Steve Meyer as a “young-earth
creationist,” which of course he’s not.
But I dunno, attacking someone else for writing something
that you haven’t read or even carefully read about strikes me as just plain old
dishonest. If you add to that Coyne’s braying slurs against Steve Meyer as
“lying for Jesus,” a “lying
liar,” etc., then to the charge of dishonesty I think you’d have to add
hypocrisy as well.