SOURCE: Malik, Kenan. “Inventing Allies in the Sky.” New Statesman 130, no. 4525 (19 February 2001): 49-50.

In the following review, Malik criticizes how Gould equates religion with morality in Rocks of Ages.

By the time you read this, children in the American state of Kansas will, with any luck, be reading The Origin of Species in their classrooms. In August 1999, the Kansas Board of Education, under pressure from creationists, removed evolution (as well as the Big Bang theory) from the school science curriculum. It took a vocal campaign by scientists and others—and the unseating of two antievolution members of the board in local elections—to help nudge the authority back into the modern world.

The Kansas affair is the latest in a long line of attempts by religious fundamentalists in the United States to proscribe the teachings of modern science. For many, it is also the latest example of why...