Rod Dreher, at The American Conservative, has a nice discussion of me here, focusing on some of my blog posts, and the First Things discussion. Dreher shows a good understanding of where I’m coming from.

Here’s one interesting part of his post. He points out that theists sometimes suffer from confirmation bias when it comes to endorsing intelligent design. He then writes:

I find myself more willing to pay attention to the arguments of someone like Monton, who is committed to atheism, because at least that filters out a lot of the confirmation bias. That is, if someone like Monton sees reason to take design seriously, then attention must be paid. (Similarly, when theistic scientists, like Simon Conway-Morris, endorse natural selection, I’m more inclined to take them seriously). The astonishing thing about the discussion of intelligent design is how unrestrained the personal attacks on serious people who take ID the least bit seriously can be.

… this is not disinterested scientific critique. This is personal invective. One sees this all the time. When preachers and religion apologists do it, you roll your eyes and move on. But when scientists do it, it’s far more disturbing, because they are, or ought to be, committed to dispassionate analysis.

I completely agree.

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