At Christianity Today (which bills itself as “a magazine of Evangelical conviction”), “The Evolution of Darwin,” by none other than Dinesh D’Souza. The main point of the short article is that Darwin, the patron saint of the New Atheists, was at best a conflicted agnostic who, unlike the New Atheists, “did not boast about his unbelief; rather, he approached it with marked public caution.”

After recounting some of the events of Darwin’s personal history that moved him toward skepticism, D’Souza observes:

This history is important because we can embrace Darwin’s account of evolution without embracing his metaphysical naturalism and unbelief. Dawkins and others like him are in a way confusing the two faces of Charles Darwin. They are under the illusion that to be an evolutionist is essentially to be an atheist. Darwin, to his credit, rejected the equation of these two stances as illogical, even if he didn’t always maintain, within his own life, a clear distinction between his science and his animus toward God.

That seems like a nice point to make. Biologists who champion evangelistic atheism have science on their side, but they invariably suggest that no self-respecting biologist could possibly be a believer, and no believer could possibly understand Evolution (else they would no longer be a believer). Since there are plenty of believing scientists and biologists out there (surveys show that something like 50% believe in something), those who argue this way are blatantly misrepresenting the facts … a charge they incessantly toss at the ID people. They ought to take a lesson from Darwin, who was so concerned about his credibility that he spent decades refining his data and his theory before he finally published Origin of Species in 1859. One of the best ways to blow your case is to overstate your argument.