Sunday July 22, 2007

Atlas of Creation Revisited

When I was subbing at Radosh.net a few weeks ago, I posted about the Atlas of Creation, an elaborate and incredibly expensive anti-Darwinist tome that argues for creationism from an Islamic perspective. The book, which weighs 14 pounds, has been showing up in the mailboxes of everyone who’s anybody in science, media, and education—running up quite a FedEx bill for someone. This week, the Times tracked down many more of the book’s recipients, whose biggest decision seems to be what to do with the damned thing. While the Atlas created a public stir in France, the U.S. response has been much more low-key. “We are used to books that are totally wrongheaded about science and confuse science and religion,” Kevin Padian, an evolutionary biologist at UC Berkeley, tells the paper. “That’s politics.”

[Thanks to Francis for the tip.]