Denyse O’Leary has taken fellow Canadian Bob Breakenridge to task in The Calgary Herald for writing a column which, as O’Leary says, “is an excellent illustration of why one should not write about big topics without basic research.”

The 2005 Judge Jones decision in Pennsylvania, to which Breakenridge devotes much of his column, has not crimped the worldwide growth of interest in intelligent design. That is no surprise. A judge is not a scientist, and Jones cannot plug gaping holes in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Evolution is–contrary to its (largely) publicly funded zealots– in deep trouble, for a number of reasons.

O’Leary goes on to rebut a number of false statements in Breakenridge’s piece, and she has an interesting analysis of a recent poll on evolution:

Breakenridge informs us that in a recent Angus Reid poll, “A shockingly low 37 per cent of Albertans supported the position that humans beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years.” Well, good, let’s drive the numbers lower still. That position is an article of atheist dogma. Evidence for it is hailed as a truth we must all embrace; evidence against it is shrugged off as a temporary setback. Try doubting the dogma, and you could end up starring in Ben Stein’s Expelled, Part II.

Breakenridge also frets, “An even greater number of Albertans–40 percent–agreed that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years.” That’s easy to explain. It was the only other option (barring “don’t know”). The ever-popular “God uses evolution” choice wasn’t offered.

Forced to choose between excluding God and including him, I’d pick option two, even though I accept NASA’s estimate of our Earth’s age (4.5 billion years) and consider common ancestry a reasonable idea.

My guess is, Albertans diverged from the national norm because they considered the question more carefully than some folk.

The rest of the article is available here.