Do you ever wonder whether Ann Coulter believes her own bullshit? Jerry Coyne, a prominent evolutionary biologist, asks this question (more politely than I) in this book review of Coulter's latest piece of smegma, Godless. Coulter's inaccuracies, lies, misunderstandings, and grotesque distortions are so ludicrous that one wonders about her sincerity. But Coyne points out the real problem: a lot of people do believe this tripe she's selling. Annoyed at this, Coyne calmly proceeds to rip Coulter's idiocy limb from limb. Excerpts:
Enamored of ID, and unable to fathom a scientific reason why biologists don't buy it, Coulter suggests that scientists are an evil sub-cabal of atheist liberals, a group so addicted to godlessness that they must hide at all costs the awful "truth" that evolution didn't happen. She accuses evolutionists of brainwashing children with phony fossils and made-up "evidence," turning the kids into "Darwiniacs" stripped of all moral (i.e., biblical) grounding and prone to become beasts and genocidal lunatics. To Coulter, biologists are folks who, when not playing with test tubes or warping children's minds, encourage people to have sex with dogs. (I am not making this up.)
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What's annoying about Coulter (note: there's more than one thing!) is that she insistently demands evidence for evolution (none of which she'll ever accept), but requires not a shred of evidence for her "alternative hypothesis." She repeatedly assures us that God exists (not just any God -- the Christian God), that there is only one God (she's no Hindu, folks), that we are made in the image of said God, that the Christian Bible, like Antonin Scalia's Constitution, "is not a 'living' document" (that is, not susceptible to changing interpretation; so does she think that Genesis is literally true?), and that God just might have used evolution as part of His plan. What makes her so sure about all this? And how does she know that the Supreme Being, even if It exists, goes by the name of Yahweh, rather than Allah, Wotan, Zeus, or Mabel? If Coulter just knows these things by faith alone, she should say so, and then tell us why she's so sure that what Parsees or Zunis just know is wrong. I, for one, am not prepared to believe that Ann Coulter is made in God's image without seeing some proof.
Woo hoo! If you want to read an outstanding example of a true intellectual ass-kickin', read all of Coyne's devastating attack. You're expecting me to say something here to the effect that it makes me almost sorry for the anorexic, reputed cocaine abusing, suspected transvestite Coulter. Wrong, It didn't make me feel sorry at all.
It made me laugh with cruel delight.
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