William F. Buckley and Evolution

A very favorable commentary about William F. Buckley, Jr. by the self-described liberal E. J. Dionne is in today's Washington Post:

It is time that I confess to an illicit love. I am now, and have been almost all my life, an admirer of William F. Buckley Jr.

His 8oth birthday is approaching and the 50th anniversary of the National Review was recently celebrated. Therefore, I thought it an appropriate time to take a look at some of the things Buckley said during a debate in 1997 on macroevolutionary theory:

[M]y colleagues and I judge that the evidence for the naturalist theory of evolution is not merely insubstantial, it is fanciful. . . .

. . .

I'm reminded of the reply by an elderly scientist a hundred years ago, when confronted by an exuberant young skeptic. He said to his student, "I gotta tell you, I find it more reasonable to believe in God, than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop." So I beg your attention to our resolution tonight, which is that the dogma of evolution should give way to a broader intelligence, which makes way for a First Mover.

For the full text of the debate, which included Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson, David Berlinski, Michael Ruse, Eugenie Scott, Kenneth Miller and Barry Lynn, go here.

For a more recent comment by him in the midst of discussing a different issue, go here.