The Chuck Norris Award

Chuck Norris used his first column for World Net Daily to give the world his take on the theory of evolution:

But here's what I really think about the theory of evolution: It's not real. It is not the way we got here. In fact, the life you see on this planet is really just a list of creatures God has allowed to live. We are not creations of random chance. We are not accidents. There is a God, a Creator, who made you and me. We were made in His image, which separates us from all other creatures.

One click led to another yesterday, and I found myself reading what is probably the most cogent explanation of creationist thinking I've ever seen, in that instead of just stating that Darwin is wrong, it says why. Of course, the reasons are not going to make any biologists shout "My word, you're right!", but at least they are there.

But the piece, from 2000, in Christianity Today does contain this lovely line, and this has led me to award the very first Chuck Norris Award for Intellectually Negligible Advocacy of Creationism to its author, Nancy Pearcey:

In a reader survey by Seventeen magazine, half said they wanted creation taught alongside evolution.

It was a close run thing. Ann Coulter had to be excluded, to give the rest of the world a fair chance. And although Richard Dawkins has become so irritating it's tempting just to disagree with him for the hell of it, this doesn't exactly qualify as advocacy. So Nancy it is. Congratulations.