Ann Coulter data point:

If you ever thumbed through her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism, you noticed that a big proportion was devoted to ridiculing evolution. But it wasn't clear what her position was on the issue - since most of the writing was presenting critics of Darwin. Coulter tends to avoid making outright declarations on policy at any serious level and prefers to engage in ad-hominem screeds. So her "public face" on evolution wasn't clear (at least to this reader).

No longer. In a typical blame-liberals-for-everything column, she comes right out and says:

... Huckabee says he doesn't believe in evolution. Neither do I, for reasons detailed in approximately one-third of my No. 1 New York Times best-selling book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism."

Look, Coulter just tosses out nonsense, is incoherent with many of her arguments, and dealing with them is a waste of time. So why this post? Because the way to keep your wasted time to a minimum is to note her stance on evolution and leave it at that. It's an excellent proxy for a person's professed world-view, which for Coulter is a complete dismissal of science. And it's different from standard-issue religion, which, while it may believe in a few untestable notions (of a God, afterlife, spiritual power) does not challenge science in the same way as evolution-denial.

It's a little surprising to see Coulter come out explicitly against evolution because it sets her apart from almost all the other conservative commentators, and especially from the money-cons.


posted by Quiddity at 12/25/2007 11:08:00 AM