“I am afraid that Hitchens does not really respect his creationist adversaries. He is glad that the courts have protected Americans from ‘the inculcation of compulsory ‘creationist’ stupidity in the classroom’ . . . Now I understand a fierce uppercut, and I actually respect the ability to deliver one. But you really shouldn’t write things like that, not in a chapter where you also (for inexplicable reasons) wrote something like the following:
We have only recently established that a cow is closer in family to a whale than to a horse; other wonders certainly await us.
Well, on the principles that appear to be operating here, it certainly looks as though other wonders do promise to prance across the stage in front of us. This is the victory of vaudeville in the natural sciences. And this wonder, along with the next ones, will be inculcated in classrooms across America, with no judge available to snort rudely at them, or declare them, if not unconstitutional, at least mildly amusing” (God Is, pp. 33-34).