The Pandasthumb blog is instructive for understanding how our most virulent opponents think. Informed, coherent thought is not always in evidence there. Perhaps the most extreme counterexample I’ve encountered recently is the following set of remarks by someone named Ed Darrell. I leave it to commenters on this blog to have fun with it:
First, who says evolution IS losing the PR battle? Show me. The figures creep up slowly, but there are more people who understand smidgen about evolution at every contretemps. Yes, it would be good if the consciousness rose faster. But that’s not losing.
But second, to the extent that we could do it better, we need to have a few consistent messages and stick to them. That’s difficult to do. Even among textbooks, most of them don’t bother to list the five evolution facts (as Mayr tallies them) that make the foundation of Darwin’s insights plausible and nearly irrefutable. Evolution theory is left to the individual scientist to explain, and to the individual reader/citizen to figure out. Contrast this with Newton’s “Laws of Motion,†or the “Laws of Thermodynamics.â€Â
I recommend we pass out talking points with the five facts of evolution.
Then we need to concentrate on a few easily understood ideas. For example, to rebut “teach the controversy,†we should say “teach the facts first.†Who can argue with the need to have the facts first? Of course, we’ll need to specify what those facts are that need to be taught, but we can do it.
We also need to bring the issue home to people so they understand it. What do I mean?
In Texas, our economy depends on evolution, and intelligent design offers only ways to muck up the economy. What do I mean? One, I mean that the eradication of the cotton boll weevil is essential to our dwindling, but still significant, cotton industry. That eradication process, led the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is based on poisoning boll weevils to eradicate them from specific regions, in doses and ways carefully calculated to avoid forcing the bugs to mutate resistance  it takes a solid understanding of evolution to make the program work.
For a second example, Texas now loses $1.5 billion a year in crop and livestock destruction from the introduced pest, the Argentine fire ant. This pest has evolved several new defenses due to ill-thought-out eradication attempts. Now our only hope of recouping that significant loss is to understand the evolution of the beast, to delay evolved resistance to new eradication attempts. This pest now affects California, Arizona, New Mexico, and much of the southeast. National losses are probably in the $10 billion range. It would be not just folly, but sheer stupidity to abandon our efforts to control this insect  and ALL of those efforts depend on a thorough understanding of evolution theory. Is it wrong? Let ID find a better way to fight this beast that kills farm animals, we’ll let ID have a spot in the high school textbooks. But unless it can do that, quickly, ID just gets in the way and continues the losses.
Third, the Rio Grande Valley’s economy depends a lot on the success of grapefruit as a crop. Need I remind you that grapefruit is a news species that didn’t exist 125 years ago? But for evolution, this crop would not exist at all. Moreover, the current favorite is a variant of red grapefruit. Red grapefruit are the result of sport mutation in the late 1940s  exactly the sort of mutation that intelligent design advocates claim is impossible. In short, the existence of the crop at all is a refutation of intelligent design. According to ID, all Texans are crazy, especially Texas farmers. But the current most popular variety, Rio Reds, were bred by scientists at Texas A&M, using evolution theory, to be resistant to the occasional hard freezes that strike the Rio Grande Valley. So, every aspect of grapefruit agriculture denies the claims of intelligent design, and is dependent on application of the evolution theory intelligent design advocates (and the Dover school board) claim are “just theory.â€Â
Fourth, Texas has a very active medical research community. The disease researchers and healers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas who work on heart disease, diabetes and other diseases, and the researchers and healers at Houston’s M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, among others, all use evolution theory to fight disease.
We’re talking billions of dollars at stake. These economic arguments need to be made more forcefully, more often, more clearly, and more locally. Kansas is dependent on wheat, for example  I have a list of publications on how modern wheat farming is dependent on evolution, too. Minnesota has its own crops. California has grapes, artichokes and dairy. Every state has an agricultural, livestock and medical stake in evolution. Every state is, therefore, threatened by intelligent design.
When was the last time you saw someone argue that?
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/08/one_reason_evol.html#c42256