Bumper Sticker Science: Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Public Education

I don’t mean to be a one note samba of late, but this issue of evolution and Intelligent Design has hit the news hard, and the results of people questioning the intellectual hegemony of Darwinism are laughable. If you don’t believe that the scientific community at large is afraid of anything which would question naturalistic evolution, consider the outrage sparked by this sticker in a text book in Atlanta: (here, here)

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

As a result of this “warning sticker,” the chicken littles of the scientific community are running to the courts claiming this is a violation of the so-called separation of church and state. I must have missed something, but did you happen to catch the Nicene Creed or the Lord’s Prayer in the warning sticker? Did you feel the need to repent and seek religious conversion as a result of the sticker?

What is really happening is that the scientific community has defined the science of human life and origins as evolution, and defined all other contenders as religion. If you wanted to put it in a formula, it might be: Evolution=Science; Every Other View=Private Religious Value. They are scared to death of anything which might challenge their scientific sugar daddy. If they were not frightened, they would challenge ID on the merits, but they don’t. I don’t claim to have read everything which is a challenge to ID science, but the fair amount I have read boils down to ad hominum and ad hoc attacks.

Another thing which strikes me as ironic, is that the sticker in question is altogether scientific. It states the position which follows and encourages the reader to be critical and open minded. If one replaced the second sentence with just about anything else, there would be no furor; but because it addresses evolution specifically, some very scientific shorts are in a bunch.

In case you did not know, the nexus of the ID movement can be found on the Discovery Institute web page.