you tell me your religious beliefs; I'll tell you mine

From Richard John Neuhaus in First Things...

Jonathan Hodgkin, an Oxford geneticist, raises the alarm about J. Scott Turner’s The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself (Harvard).

Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Hodgkin accuses Turner of believing that the physiological evidence indicates that there is an ­element of intentionality in the manner in which “feedbacks” account for the ways in which developing organs become well matched to the demands that are made on them.

Hodgkin declares in tones most ­ominous: “An orthodox Darwinian will have no truck with intentionality, but Turner devotes a whole chapter to it, describing it as the 800-pound gorilla sitting unacknowledged in the corner.” He adds, “If he wants to write this kind of book, he should be more explicit about his own religious beliefs.”

There you have it. Hodgkin does not accuse Turner of cooking the ­evidence or doing bad science. No, the charge is that he has violated the beliefs of “orthodox” Darwinians. To his credit, in a manner of speaking, Hodgkin is quite explicit about his own religious belief, namely, orthodox Darwinism.