A Titan infiltrates the blogosphere

The evolution versus creationism debate has finally infiltrated the mainstream blogosphere: both Andrew Sullivan and Kausfiles have links to Planet with a Purpose. This article is supposedly "bad news for athiest devotees" in which noted Darwinian philosopher Daniel Dennett purportedly conceeds that "life on earth shows signs of having a higher purpose."

Doing Things With Words has a great critique of "Planet with a Purpose" on philosophical grounds. What I find amazing is that creationism has somewhow decided that The Gaia Hypothesis is somewhow the way to go in attacking evolution. To be fair to serious geologists, the legitimate Gaia Hypothesis merely states that biological responses regulate the Earth's environment. Planet with a Purpose goes a little further than that when it's author Robert Wright writes:

Meanwhile, as the human species is becoming a global brain, gradually assuming conscious control of the planet's stewardship, other species—also descended from that single primitive cell that lived billions of years ago—perform other planetary functions. Trees are lungs, for example, generating oxygen.