David Berlinski is the William F. Buckley Jr. of Darwin doubters, so there's a certain fitting (as well as entertaining and enlightening) quality to the series of interviews with Dr. Berlinski being serially aired at National Review Online. Part 2 is now up for view. Peter Robinson, firmly on Berlinski's side on the evolution question, conducts the conversation with a pleasing, modest everyman's sort of manner. Berlinski, of course, is a great talker.

Regarding Darwinian theory:

That's not a theory. That's just a string of wet sponges on a clothesline. That doesn't tell us anything deep about biological structure.

It is simply an exercise in conditional plausibility. Yeah, it could have happened that way.

Robinson asks how it could be, then, that Darwin swept the field of biology by the end of the 19th century. Berlinski:

How did it happen that Marxism swept its field, swept it so thoroughly and completely that a hundred million people had to die before someone realized "You know, that's not such a swell theory after all. That theory may have certain problems."

On the general run of professional scholars:

Academics throughout the Western world form a native conspiracy class. They'll believe anything. And once they believe something the conspiracy is held very tenaciously.

It's great stuff. Watch it here.