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The Times has an excerpt from Richard Dawkin’s new book The Greatest Show On Earth detailing the evidence for the theory behind the fact of evolution. In the excerpt, Dawkins decides that a mild, mannered approach to combating creationism is required. Just kidding. He throws the following bomb at creationists:

Imagine you are a teacher of more recent history, and your lessons on 20th-century Europe are boycotted, heckled or otherwise disrupted by well-organised, well-financed and politically muscular groups of Holocaust-deniers. Unlike my hypothetical Rome-deniers, Holocaustdeniers really exist. They are vocal, superficially plausible and adept at seeming learned. They are supported by the president of at least one currently powerful state, and they include at least one bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Imagine that, as a teacher of European history, you are continually faced with belligerent demands to “teach the controversy”, and to give “equal time” to the “alternative theory” that the Holocaust never happened but was invented by a bunch of Zionist fabricators.

Fashionably relativist intellectuals chime in to insist that there is no absolute truth: whether the Holocaust happened is a matter of personal belief; all points of view are equally valid and should be equally “respected”.

The plight of many science teachers today is not less dire.

A harsh and confrontational statement but there is some validity in what Dawkins is saying. Intellectually, there is no difference between creationism and Holocaust-denialism. Proponents of both cling to their errant beliefs in spite of the array of evidence against their views.

Of course, we never hear about Holocaust-deniers being active on school boards or in committees on curriculum arguing for their views to be taught alongside the accepted history of World War II. The only supporters for Holocaust-deniers are anti-semites who try and cover their bigotry with the guise of academic freedom.

That creationists get a better run in challenging evolution (especially in the US) due to the special privilege of religion and that, in moral terms, what they teach is far less objectionable. Indeed, for anti-evolutionists, they appeal morality that without a god, anything is possible such as the Holocaust. Ethically, one cannot separate the two camps in regards to how they twist and distort evidence to suit their preferred views.

The danger in Dawkins’ rhetoric is that creationists will claim that Dawkins regards them a Holocaust-deniers or equivalent to the Nazis (not that they can resist linking Darwin to Nazi Germany). The distinction is clear but that will not deter the stupid. But if we continually consider the stupid before we speak then we would be forever mute.