Thoughts in a Haystack

Here is a nice bit from the DI's booklet, "A Parent's Guide to Intelligent Design."

Compare these statements:

There is credible scientific dissent from Darwinian evolution: over 800 Ph.D. scientists have signed a statement that they "are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life," and therefore "[c]areful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

Although theistic evolution receives much attention from the newsmedia, it represents a fringe position among leading evolutionary biologists.

But then look at this recent analysis of the DI's list, "A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism," comparing the DI's list with "Project Steve," where the signers, all named Steve or variants thereof such as Steven, Stephen, Stephanie, Stephan or Estephan (which constitute roughly 1% of the U.S. population), affirm that:

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.

David H. Bailey then winnowed both lists down to those with a Ph.D. degree and/or professional position in a core field closely related to evolution (Anatomy, Anthropology, Biochemistry, Biology, Biophysics, Botany, Ecology, Entomology, Genetics, Geology, Geophysics, Microbiology, Neurophysiology, Paleontology, Physiology or Zoology). It turns out that there are just two persons named Steve on the DI's list with qualifications in the core fields compared to 708 on Project Steve ... or, in other words, "Darwin Doubters" are approximately 0.3% of scientists more or less qualified to make a judgment on evolutionary theory. It takes a lot of chutzpah for the DI to talk about someone else's "fringe position."

And, no ... science classes in public elementary and high schools, which spend little enough time on evolutionary science as it is, should not waste time on the (religiously motivated) fringe positions of every crank who happens to hold a Ph.D.