Farewell Anthony Lewis

New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis wrote his farewell column this week after 32 years.

The good news is he's calling it quits. The bad news is he is as clueless as when he undertook this assignment 32 years ago.

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Lewis says his tenure as a columnist for the Times has witnessed a challenge to "a basic tenet of modern society: faith in reason." He says no one can miss the reality of that challenge in the threat of Islamic fundamentalism after Sept. 11. But Lewis has never been very concerned with that threat. The bigger threat he writes about so often is another one.

"Fundamentalist Christians in America, believing that the Bible's story of creation is the literal truth, question not only Darwin but the scientific method that has made contemporary civilization possible," he writes.

Now let's just analyze that statement for a moment.

In one sentence, Lewis links Darwin with the scientific method and the scientific method with civilization. Why? Did Darwin apply the scientific method to his theories about origins? No. He couldn't and didn't. His theories would be broadly discredited if he did – or if his disciples did.

They don't. Lewis can't explain creation any better using the scientific method than Darwin could. I doubt very much, in fact, if Lewis has even tried – if he has ever read Darwin with a critical eye or examined the fact that many of his theories cannot be tested scientifically, and those that can fail the test.

Darwin was not a scientist. He was, in fact, something of a fundamentalist religious crusader – determined to find an alternative to the biblical theory of creation whether it could be tested scientifically or not. And his followers, like Lewis, have placed a blind faith in Darwin's theories that is as irrational and untestable as anything Islamic fundamentalists put forth.

For people like Lewis, saying the name Darwin is like chanting some mantra. It explains everything for them – whether they have read Darwin or not – whether they have applied any critical examination to his writings or not. Lewis is a pseudo-intellectual – someone who likes to pretend he is relying on reason and logic, but who is only standing on a weak foundation of pretense.

Next, after saying the name Lewis believes explains all things about creation – Darwin – he leaps to the wild suggestion that the scientific method has made contemporary civilization possible.

Now, I don't know about that. Surely the scientific method has brought us many advances and conveniences – electricity, radio, television, telephones, radio, the internal combustion engine, etc. But did it bring civilization? I don't think so.

In fact, I would submit that what brought civilization was just the thing that Lewis so detests – the biblical revelations and laws he rejects.

That's not the way Lewis sees it, of course. He makes the claim that "faith in reason was the foundation stone of the United States." In my opinion, Lewis is confusing the American War for Independence and the founding of this great country with the French Revolution. They were not likeminded ideas, but rather opposite approaches to creating new societies.

Lewis is wedded to the French Revolution model – that brought with it little but atrocities, death and destruction. I am wedded to the American Revolution model – that brought the greatest expansion of freedom the world has ever known.

The French Revolution led ultimately to communism and fascism. The American Revolution led to more than 200 years of constitutional self-government and the rule of law.

The key to the success of the American Revolution and the model created by the U.S. founders was, as George Washington and James Madison said so often, based on biblical morality. What they founded was a system of government that could only work, they warned, if the people were a moral people who understood the lessons of the Bible. The French Revolution set out to create a new man and a new nature using pseudo-scientific principles – principles later adopted and "perfected" by Karl Marx and Adolph Hitler.

I'm happy to see Anthony Lewis leave the Times. But I'm sad to see he has learned so little in his 32 years doing the job – especially for a man who claims to have "faith" only in "reason."