Panda’s Thumb on the Norway Murders, Christianity, Darwin, and tolerance
Nick Matzke’s post at the Panda’s Thumb blog is a must-read:
As predictable as the sunrise, creationists are launching another round of the disgusting practice of trying to tie every mass murderer to Darwin and evolution, self-consistency and logic be damned. This time it’s about Brevik, the bomber and shooter in last Friday’s killings. We saw this at Uncommon Descent on Sunday (‘Norway shooter a Darwinian terrorist?’) – itself relying on an article from the fundamentalist WorldNetDaily (‘Terrorist proclaimed himself ‘Darwinian,’ not ‘Christian”), and today from alleged scholar John West at the Discovery Institute (‘Fundamentalist Christian or Deranged Social Darwinist?’).
West does the usual thing, word-searching Brevik’s 1500-page screed for the few references to Darwin, and brazenly playing down the hundreds of references to Christianity and God and the Templars and Christian holy war against Islam. These are just brushed off by West. West pretends that Brevik calls himself a ‘Christian atheist’ through pretty optimistic (optimistic from West’s perspective) readings of some Brevik passages, which completely ignores the various quite direct references that Brevik makes towards his own belief in God.
