Arts & Letters Daily has recently highlighted several excellent articles about the controversy surrounding evolution and its competing “theories,” creationism and intelligent design.

The first, authored by Oxford University Professor Richard Dawkins, is a no-holds-barred assault on the anti-intellectual, anti-scientific consequences of faith-based criticisms of evolution. One of the most outspoken and well-known academics in the world, Dawkins (Wikipedia) once famously said that “it is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, ‘mad cow’ disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.” Dawkins’ argument then was that science is fundamentally different than religion and that “faith” in scientific evidence is not analogous to “faith” in god(s).

But I would want to deny even the lesser charge of purely verbal zealotry. There is a very, very important difference between feeling strongly, even passionately, about something because we have thought about and examined the evidence for it on the one hand, and feeling strongly about something because it has been internally revealed to us, or internally revealed to somebody else in history and subsequently hallowed by tradition. There’s all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority, or revelation.

Science, for Dawkins, is not on a “different plane” than religion. Instead, the two disciplines offer competing explanations for the same phenomena.

Humans have a great hunger for explanation. It may be one of the main reasons why humanity so universally has religion, since religions do aspire to provide explanations. We come to our individual consciousness in a mysterious universe and long to understand it. Most religions offer a cosmology and a biology, a theory of life, a theory of origins, and reasons for existence. In doing so, they demonstrate that religion is, in a sense, science; it’s just bad science. Don’t fall for the argument that religion and science operate on separate dimensions and are concerned with quite separate sorts of questions. Religions have historically always attempted to answer the questions that properly belong to science. Thus religions should not be allowed now to retreat away from the ground upon which they have traditionally attempted to fight. They do offer both a cosmology and a biology; however, in both cases it is false.

This clash is no more evident than in the debate between those who accept the scientific truth of evolution and those who prefer to put faith in creationism or “intelligent design.” Dawkins takes issue with the rhetorical tricks being played by the latter group—wherein uncertainty is seen as evidence of science’s shortcomings—in an article in the London Times (“Creationism: God’s Gift To The Ignorant”). Unfortunately, this tactic creates an environment in which scientists are unable to express doubt, something that is absolutely critical to the scientific process. For it is mystery, after all, that drives the scientist to seek new knowledge and a better understanding of the world.

The creationists’ fondness for “gaps” in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas.

Dawkins’ critique will no doubt be characterized as anti-religious zealotry and liberal elitism. He’s been down that road before, however, and his response is just as scathing as it is blunt.

The more extreme version of [the charge that science is just faith] is an accusation of zealotry and bigotry in scientists themselves as great as that found in religious people. Sometimes there may be a little bit of justice in this accusation; but as zealous bigots, we scientists are mere amateurs at the game. We’re content to argue with those who disagree with us. We don’t kill them.

But is Dawkins’ straight-forward defense of science vis a vis religion a prudent strategic choice? Michael Ruse, a professor of philosophy at Florida State University, has written a forthcoming book entitled The Evolution-Creation Struggle in which he answers with a decisive “no”. A profile of Ruse’s argument in the Boston Globe explains his criticism of “evolutionism,” a form of the aforementioned “science is a religion” claim.

All told, Ruse claims, loading values onto the platform of evolutionary science constitutes “evolutionism,” an outlook that goes far beyond the scientific acceptance of evolution as a means of explaining the origins and development of species. Provocatively, Ruse argues that evolutionism has often constituted a “religion” itself by offering “a world picture, a story of origins, and a special place for humans,” while its proponents have been “trying deliberately to do better than Christianity.”

To be sure, Ruse acknowledges, some biologists are religious, while a significant portion of religious believers are willing to accept the concept of evolution at least to some extent. But, he argues, the way evolutionists have often linked their science to progressive politics has, in recent decades, become anathema to many believers, especially fundamentalist Christians whose biblical literalism leads them to believe that worldly change will only arrive with the Second Coming. The advocates of evolution, Ruse argues, have thus been “competing for space in the hearts and minds” of many religious believers without even realizing it - much to the detriment of their cause.

Dawkins in particular is a target of Ruse’s critique.

“I don’t have any more belief than Dawkins, but I do think it matters that he is making it very difficult for those of us who care about evolution to put forward a reasonable face to the reasonable portion [of the public] in the middle.”

Dizikes’ article provides some interesting responses to Ruse’s arguments by fellow scientists and “evolutionists,” some of whom feel that he is providing “ammunition for the opposition.” Others, though, see Ruse’s message as an important one that offers hope of “converting” religious believers to the side of science and evolution.

That’s why [Ruse] will continue to insist that many religious believers who currently reject or remain indifferent to Darwin can come to accept it - as long as they are presented strictly with scientific facts, and given less reason to think evolution could be a threat to their social and spiritual values.

But is this true? Can Christian Fundamentalists, many of whom hold “spiritual values” plainly at odds with scientific rationality, be convinced that evolution is compatible with their existing worldviews?

I remain unconvinced. Ruse seems to acknowledge that he can’t convert everyone with the example of Darwin On Trial author Phillip Johnson, but I fear that he is underestimating the number of skeptics who will remain so regardless of scientific evidence or reasoning. That is Dawkins’ argument, after all, and it seems plainly evident in the current debate over intelligent design.

Scientists really are competing for the hearts and minds of religious believers. “Playing nice” with those who reject rationality, the scientific method, and standards of evidence in favor of “faith” might serve to quiet the public debate over evolution, but it will do little to convert religious believers to the side of science. Ignorance has proven powerfully appealing, in Kansas and elsewhere, and sugar-coating the issue won’t help lessen that appeal.