We are living in an Age of Endarkenment. At least at times it seems so, particularly when we begin to blame the books. In May, “Human Events,” which bills itself as “The National Conservative Weekly, Since 1944” proclaimed the ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries (www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7591).

The books were chosen by a panel of “15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders,” which seems an extravagantly kind description of Phyllis Schlafly, the only woman panelist in the bunch. She might have been the one to nominate Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique,” which made the top ten because it harmed women who thought they could aspire to be lawyer, doctor, professor and engineer along with homemaker.

The top three harmful books are Marx and Engel’s “The Communist Manifesto,” “Quotations from Chairman Mao” and Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” followed by John Dewey’s “Democracy and Education”, “The Kinsey Report,” Keynes’ “General Theory of Employment,” “Interest and Money,” and Marx a second time for “Das Kapital.”

Darwin appears twice on the honorable mention list for “Origin of Species” and “Descent of Man,” because he harmed the pride of the panelists who would scrap entire bodies of knowledge – biology, chemistry, geology, physics, astronomy – in order to be specially created rather than evolved. Rachel Carson achieves honorable mention for “Silent Spring,” because it harmed a nation into thinking that we should not poison the air we breathe, the water we drink or the soil that grows our food.

Let’s be brutally honest about the “Human Events” panelists. They would be the first to say that “guns don’t kill, people do,” yet blame books for causing the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, Nazism, equality for women in the workforce, the rise of modern biology, and realization that the Earth is not an endless toilet. Had these books never been published or read, 20th century history would have been much the same. Books are passive; people make them into the histories they want.

Further, the panelists are intellectual cowards on two counts. First, if they really think the books are to blame, why didn’t they finger any number of religious texts as “most harmful” for the incalculable death and destruction dealt in the name of a particular scripture.

Second, despite claims of scholarly expertise, the panelists’ findings, like the white papers produced by most think-tanks, are not subject to the brutal checks and balances of scientific peer review, but are published by a vanity press. As Paul Krugman noted in a New York Times article, these experts are hired to sow doubt in the minds of the public about real science, from global warming to evolution, because the game here is shaping public policy through public relations, rather than through research and knowledge discovery.

More book blaming comes from Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. He would put “Harry Potter” on the top ten list of harmful books because, as he wrote in a 2003 letter, of its “subtle seductions : that work imperceptibly : and erode Christianity in the soul before it can even grow properly.” Hmmm. So much for all the good, dutiful kids who, at worst, have been subtly seduced away from a video game to read a well-written page-turner.

So much for Jeesoo Sohn, a ninth-grader in San Francisco, who wrote a review of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” for the July 23 San Francisco Chronicle: “Harry Potter is growing up and is about to face the long set of challenges in store for him, revolving around the battle of hatred versus love. : he has to be prepared for anything, and he has to use the power of love.” Sounds like a scriptural message deserving of an “amen.”

Unfortunately, the cardinal also dodges the same intellectual minefield that the “Human Events” panel does: What about all the young souls who, before they could “grow properly,” were massacred in the name of a particular scripture? Blaming the book, whether scripture, “Harry Potter” or “Origin of Species,” spells endarkenment for religion, science and education. When the written word is blamed for the evil men do, no book is safe or sacred.

– Leonard Krishtalka is director of the Biodiversity Institute and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Kansas University.