There's a new book suggesting Science-with-a-capital-S has become another religion, demanding unthinking adherence to its commandments. Certainly many of the people who do more writing about science than actual science are guilty of trying to create such adherence (with themselves as the voice of authority, naturally), but who is this new Prometheus whose mission it is to free humanity from the shackles of our Darwinist overlords? Self-professed crank David Berlinski, author of such books as A Tour of the Calculus and the new The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions.
I had the opportunity to hear Berlinski speak, at Kepler's Books some 8 years ago, and he certainly marches to his own crazy drummer, I'll give him that. The article about his new book on Slate.com mentions his "peculiar, mischievous style," which didn't make his book on calculus (sorry, "the calculus") very enlightening, even to a math geek like me. At Kepler's, the crowd from nearby Stanford kept him busy defending his essay The Deniable Darwin, which doubts the solidity of the theory of natural selection and which is now proudly posted on the Intelligent Design website. I could tell he had no time for people who weren't smart enough to agree with him, and his style was more condescending than mischievous.
The debate will rage forever, though, because the animal nature we possess (whether or not you believe it's accompanied by an angelic nature) makes us divide everything into Us and Them. Uninspired by religion and lacking the curiosity to be a scientist, Berlinski is trying to create a new skeptic pecking order (with him at the top, of course) because we all know to criticize something is to magically rise above it.
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