Thursday, August 11, 2005

Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism. Johnson, Phillip

"In fact, there is a great deal more to the creation-evolution controversy than meets the eye, or rather than meets the carefully cultivated media stereotype of 'creationists' as Bible-quoting know-nothings who refuse to face up to the scientific evidence. The creationists may be wrong about many things, but they have at least one very important point to argue, a point that has been thoroughly obscured by all the attention paid to Noah's Flood and other side issues. What the science educators propose to teach as 'evolution,' and label as fact, is based not upon any incontrovertible empirical evidence, but upon a highly controversial philosophical presupposition. The controversy over evolution is therefore not going to go away as people become better educated on the subject. On the contrary, the more people learn about the philosophical content of what scientists are calling the 'fact of evolution,' the less they are going to like it."