Re: Niles Eldredge letter to the editor


Jason Spaceman wrote:
From today's NY Times:
------------------------------------------------------------------
On 'Evolutionism'
To the Editor:
Judith Shulevitz's essay (''When Cosmologies Collide,'' Jan. 22)
contends that scientists often do not acknowledge the broader social
implications of ''evolutionism,'' the mélange of often conflicting
philosophical conclusions that have been drawn by disparate people
from the very idea that life has evolved. It is this evolutionism, she
says, that continues to inspire much of the resistance to evolution.
But she gives short shrift to the fact that nearly all of the rhetoric
of creationists, including contemporary ''intelligent design''
proponents, consists of ill-informed attacks on evolutionary biology
itself, rather than on the inchoate philosophical ramifications of
''evolutionism.''

Beyond the cardboard assertions of ''irreducible complexity'' in the
supposed outboardmotor- like apparatus of bacterial flagella, and a
few other oneliners in the current intelligent design canon, lie reams
of tired old assertions of the supposed failings of evolutionists to
explain natural phenomena. There is every reason for us evolutionary
biologists to fight back, especially when the stakes are so high: the
further dilution of integrity in science teaching in our nation's
secondary schools.

Science does not offer equalopportunity choices: like it or not,
apples fall, continents move around and species evolve, all according
to natural law that is the subject matter of scientific investigation.
Resistance to evolutionism may indeed supply the motive, but the fight
is always over the veracity of the scientific evidence for evolution
itself.
NILES ELDREDGE


Eldredge is wrong; this fight has very little to do with science or
scientific evidence. The creationists are not concerned in the
slightest about scientific questions, or about correctly interpreting
data, or about forming better explanations and understanding of the
natural world. Instead, creationism/ID is a wholly-owned subsidiary of
the fundamentalist Religious Right -- it is a religious and political
movement, not a scientific one, and its goals are entirely religious
and political, not scientific. The ID/creationists are a part of a
larger political movement with radical theocratic aims, and their
anti-evolution and anti-science efforts are, as they themselves
declare, simply the "wedge issue" which they have chosen in order to
gain entry for their wider anti-democratic political goals.

Eldredge, of all people, should know this.



================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"


Creation "Science" Debunked:
http://www.geocities.com/lflank
DebunkCreation email list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DebunkCreation/


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