A few years ago a retired professor of German literature by the name of Neil Thomas popped up and wrote the weird little book Taking Leave of Darwin, a strange and incoherent romp through Lucretius, Percy and Mary Shelley, and various other oddities in which he, without spending one minute actually talking about biology as such, purported to issue a devastating summary of what was wrong here: that Darwin was a doodyhead, who stole all his ideas from Lucretius, and may have smelled bad, as well.
Well, the Discovery Institute published that one, and it seems to have encouraged the fella, who now has a longer book, “False Messiah: Darwinism as the God that Failed.” It arrived on my desk at work today and early leafing-through suggests – I know that everyone here will be shocked to hear it – that the book may not be very good. Further notes, and review, to follow. The gist of it seems to be that “Darwinism” has poisoned our culture and that only Wordsworth (yeah, I wish I were kidding, but no) can save us.