But two can play at that game. David Berlinski has it exactly right when he assigns the self-confident statements of evolutionists to the realm of ideology. Party lines are quite likely to be false, of course, but they are fervently believed in by those who utter them. The 'party' we are dealing with is that of naturalism, or materialism. Its members believe that nothing but matter exists, and given that starting point, evolution must be true.
Life is a reality, and obviously it came into existence somehow.
Evolution is not something that is seen in the rocks but deduced from a philosophy. But if we accept a realm of mind that interpenetrates matter, and that takes precedence over matter and has the capacity to organize matter, then we find ourselves in a very different and very much more satisfactory philosophical universe. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea , Dennett calls Darwinism a 'universal acid', eating through 'just about every traditional concept' and leaving in its wake a 'revolutionized world-view'. So it is not hard to see what is at stake in this debate. The scientific facts point to grave shortcomings in the ideology of materialism.