Monday, April 20, 2009

Overthrow of evolution?

So last night I was crusing my normal spot for free speech etc, aka conservapedia, and came across this in there in the news section, "Anti-creationists: do they fear an overthrow of the evolutionary paradigm in the United States? [13]"

Let me start by saying that begining a statement with anti-creationists, which I guess is better than being called something like evolutionist which doesn't actually exist, is not a good way to get well the scientific community on your side. It also implies that ID is actually creationism all dressed up in fancy wording now you can't tell from that but you can when you actually read the article:

http://creation.com/anti-creationists-do-they-fear-an-overthrow-of-darwin-in-the-us

Now the first thing that I noticed was that it was by CMI so I knew what it was going to say before it said it but I will give you a quick summary. It says that well it is obvious that scientist don't have the facts to back them up because they call ID creationism in disquise. It goes on to applaud those states that are passing what, in my opinion but not the opinion of the article writer, amounts to pro-creationism bills. It also wonders why the scientific community is so nervous.

Now for anyone that has read Dr. Kenneth Miller's book Only a Theory you will know why the scientific community is nervous. It has nothing to do with ID/creationism having all of the evidence, because we know that it does not. It has everything to do with politics and what it is like to practice science in this country. Let me summarize, this country was founded on decent and that is what makes it such a good place to practice science, you do not have to think the exact same way that your advisor did etc. Now if you start allowing politicians and the religious to decide what is and what is not science then you slowly start removing that freedom away from the scientist. Anyone who has applied for grant money knows how difficult it can be to get it but imagine if you then had to meet these religious guidelines for what is science and your study well it went against them. It would probably be a ton harder to get the grant money then right? Well that right there is what the scientific community fears, not the evidence that ID/creationism lack but the being told what you are allowed to do research on. Also this whole let the kids decide what is right is all well and good for a philosophy class and some upper level high school classes but you do not need to be letting 3rd graders decide what is right.

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