From a reader:

Fine, books can be very dangerous. I agree. Please defend the inclusion of Origin of Species on such a list – even in the “Others Receiving Votes” category.
I don’t mean to direct this to you, since you didn’t put the list together and haven’t defended it substantively. But in my mind including a book which created a new branch of science and which has been proven in most important ways to be absolutely correct about the nature of our origins renders the entire list useless and, in fact, dangerous. I say dangerous because it adds legitimacy to current movements in this country that seek to undermine science (e.g., the intelligent design movement). (I suspect we might both agree that the intelligent design movement is dangerous – I personally would include the current administration’s environmental policies as a similarly dangerous movement, but on that I suspect our opinions differ.)
I might go so far as to consider this one of the 10 most harmful Top 10 lists of the past century.

Me: No, I wouldn’t have put the Origin of Species on the list. I disagree with those who would lump Darwin with Freud and Marx. But I don’t think one can glibly say that just because the book was scientifically correct (speaking broadly, we’ve discovered lots of new things since then) and pioneering, doesn’t mean it can’t also be harmful. Darwinism certainly led to many horrors and abuses across the ideological spectrum, often through misapplication (more on that when I finish my book). But so have many scientific discoveries. Science, much like books, isn’t by definition morally good or bad. It’s what you do with it. As for Intelligent Design, that’s been covered enough around here, I think.