The following is an op-ed (my wife's) that will run shortly in the Ann Arbor News:
Fundamentalist Progressivism:
I have no axe to grind about evolution. I’m not a fundamentalist. If I were, of course, I wouldn’t dare suspect that Darwin’s account of material reality was true.
But did you know that no self-respecting progressive is allowed to suspect that it might be false? You might call it an epidemic of progressivist fundamentalism. At least, that’s my amateur diagnosis after following recent evolution court cases in the news.
There was that school board in Georgia that placed stickers reading “Evolution is a theory, not a fact…[and] should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered” on textbooks. (Teachers, please note, were then free to teach Darwin for the rest of the year.) This set off a lawsuit. The plaintiffs, like heretic-hunters of old, objected strongly to anything that smacked of questioning authority—Darwin’s, at least.
In Kansas, the state’s Board of Education adopted a set of science curriculum standards that call for students—in the standards’ own words—“to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory…the Standards do not include Intelligent Design...” Op-ed pages around the country reported this modest aspiration as if the Flat Earth Society had taken over the state of Kansas.
Then, in Dover, Pa., the school board wanted teachers to read a single paragraph intimating that a controversy exists, and giving students the option of checking a single pro-intelligent-design book out of the school library—before proceeding with instruction in Darwinian biology. This provoked another lawsuit. The plaintiff refused to tolerate the free expression of the idea that some scientists (not preachers, scientists) question evolution, and was apparently—this was kind of charming—expecting students to rush off to the library to indulge in optional research.
People who’ve been devoting only sporadic attention to the evolution wars can certainly be forgiven for thinking that somebody out there is trying to rid the country of Darwinism, or maybe of science itself. But the careful reader will note certain traits common to all these cases: None proposes to ban the teaching of evolution. None requires teaching intelligent design instead of it or even alongside it. And none, one Ann Arbor News cartoon to the contrary, proposes to replace science textbooks with the book of Genesis. All they seek is to subject a mainstream scientific view to a token amount of scientific scrutiny.
Certainly you can argue, as plenty of judges and journalists have, that that’s not what ID advocates really want—that they’re out to replace science with their own theology, just feigning interest in the findings of molecular biologists. But speculations about their deep, dark theocratic intentions don’t count as a refutation of their points.
It’s all very confusing: the journalistic template to dust off for an evolution story is supposed to be “Irrational Fundamentalists Feel Threatened by Academic Freedom.” In this corner, fighting for Reason, is the fearless scientist, disposed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead; in this corner, representing Faith, we have some poor, well-intentioned guy who believes what he believes for no particular reason.
Intelligent design is accused of not constituting “real” science because it clearly has religious implications. The trouble, of course, is that Darwinism, most especially the way it’s taught in school textbooks, also has implications about religion.
Intelligent design is also accused of being unpopular among scientists. And criticism of Darwinism is clearly outside the current mainstream—but then, so was Ignaz Semmelweis, who introduced the inconvenient and wildly unpopular idea of doctors washing their hands between conducting autopsies and delivering babies. So was Copernicus. The history of science is crammed with people who were ostracized for unpopular ideas that turned out to be correct.
And the unpopularity in this case is not all that ubiquitous—Princeton, Harvard and Cambridge (and U of M) have produced scientists who question Darwinism. It will no longer fly to sneer, as Richard Dawkins did back in 1989, that “if you meet someone who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane….” These days you look, well, fundamentalist, if you give the impression that that’s your idea of a refutation.
So whatever your theological convictions, or lack thereof, please don’t be a fundamentalist progressive. Don’t protest when someone suggests that your favorite ideas “be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”
Please ask your wife why all evolution writers who start their articles stressing that they are sitting on a fence end their articles clearly on the anti-evolution side of the fence?
The trouble, of course, is that Darwinism, most especially the way it’s taught in school textbooks, also has implications about religion.
While you're at it, ask her why people who are religious believe they can discount evolution by implying that it's religious?
No, the reason it isn't science is that it has no hypothesis, does no research, proposes no research, and has contributed no data or no new ideas in the 200 years since William Paley wrote about it. It is not science because it is a sterile idea.
No, it's accused of not constituting "real" science because it is not science by generally accepted definition of the word 'science'.