Thoughts in a Haystack

Ken Miller interviewed in the Attleboro, Massachusetts Sun Chronicle:

You've debated evolution in numerous national forums. How has the debate evolved in recent years?

Scientifically, it hasn't changed one bit.

Year after year, the anti-evolutionists make exactly the same arguments against evolution.

They have no new science, so they continue to argue that the fossil record lacks transitional forms between species, that the evolutionary mechanism cannot generate new biological information and that the process of evolution cannot be directly observed in the field or in the laboratory. All of those arguments are false, of course, and that's what I've tried to show on the occasions when I have debated an opponent of evolution.

Tactically, the anti-evolutionists have evolved quite a bit.

They started out calling themselves "creationists," and then changed their self-description to "scientific creationists."

When court cases made it clear that creationism was inherently religious, they cooked up the label of "intelligent design" to conceal their religious roots and make the idea sound more scientific.

Then, when "intelligent design" was exposed in the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005, they stopped using that term, and now argue for "critical thinking" about evolution.

When one looks at the examples of "critical" analysis they wish to insert into schools, however, they turn out to be the same old anti-evolution arguments that have been around for decades. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:03 PM