Darwinism is steadily loosing ground in the United States and a clear
example of this has been the recent entry of criticism against the theory
into textbooks in some states. Georgia, as we have noted in our Media
Watch article, Another Crack
in the Wall: Schools in Georgia (US) are Allowed to Teach about Creation,
was the first state to challenge Darwinist dogmatism and include critical
analysis in its curriculum. More recently, the Ohio State Board of Education
required Ohio students to learn about the evidence against Darwin's theory
of evolution.
In an article by John G. West Jr. of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute,
a foundation which supports critical studies about Darwinism, the steady
decline of Darwinism, the bigotry of its supporters and their crude tactics
are well explained:
After months of debate, the Ohio State Board of Education
unanimously adopted science standards on Dec. 10 that require Ohio students
to know "how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze
aspects of evolutionary theory."
Ohio thus becomes the first state to mandate that students
learn not only scientific evidence that supports Darwin's theory but also
scientific evidence critical of it... Ohio students will need to know
about scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory in order to pass graduation
tests required for a high-school diploma.
Ohio is not the only place where public officials are
broadening the curriculum to include scientific criticisms of evolution.
In September the Cobb County School District in Georgia, one of the largest
suburban school districts in the nation, adopted a policy encouraging
teachers to discuss "disputed views" about evolution as part
of a "balanced education." And last year, Congress in the conference
report to the landmark No Child Left Behind Act urged schools to inform
students of "the full range of scientific views" when covering
controversial scientific topics "such as biological evolution."
After years of being marginalized, critics of Darwin's
theory seem to be gaining ground. What is going on? And why now?
Two developments have been paramount.
First, there has been growing public recognition of the
shoddy way evolution is actually taught in many schools. Thanks to the
book Icons of Evolution by biologist Jonathan Wells, more people know
about how biology textbooks perpetuate discredited "icons" of
evolution that many biologists no longer accept as good science. Embryo
drawings purporting to prove Darwin's theory of common ancestry continue
to appear in many textbooks despite the embarrassing fact that they have
been exposed as fakes originally concocted by 19th-century German Darwinist
Ernst Haeckel. Textbooks likewise continue to showcase microevolution
in peppered moths as evidence for Darwin's mechanism of natural selection
even though the underlying research is now questioned by many biologists.
When not offering students bogus science, the textbooks
ignore real and often heated scientific disagreements over evolutionary
theory. Few students ever learn, for example, about vigorous debates generated
by the Cambrian Explosion, a huge burst in the complexity of living things
more than 500 million years ago that seems to outstrip the known capacity
of natural selection to produce biological change.
Teachers who do inform students about some of Darwinism's
unresolved problems often face persecution by what can only be termed
the Darwinian thought police. In Washington State, a well-respected biology
teacher who wanted to tell students about scientific debates over things
like Haeckel's embryos and the peppered moth was ultimately driven from
his school district by local Darwinists...
A second development fueling recent gains by Darwin's critics has been
the demise of an old stereotype.
For years, Darwinists successfully shut down any public
discussion of Darwinian evolution by stigmatizing every critic of Darwin
as a Biblical literalist intent on injecting Genesis into biology class.
While Darwinists still try that tactic, their charge is becoming increasingly
implausible, even ludicrous. Far from being uneducated Bible-thumpers,
the new critics of evolution hold doctorates in biology, biochemistry,
mathematics and related disciplines from secular universities, and many
of them teach or do research at American universities. They are scientists
like Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, University of Idaho microbiologist
Scott Minnich, and Baylor University philosopher and mathematician William
Dembski.
The ranks of these academic critics of Darwin are growing.
During the past year, more than 150 scientists - including faculty and
researchers at such institutions as Yale, Princeton, MIT, and the Smithsonian
- adopted a statement expressing skepticism of neo-Darwinism's central
claim that "random mutation and natural selection account for the
complexity of life."1
It seems that the fast decline of Darwinism in the US will continue in
the years ahead. Maybe only a few decades later, people will wonder how
such an unsubstantiated theory could be the scientific norm in the whole
20th century. And, they will become aware of the fact that Darwinists
are trying hide: That life on Earth is not the outcome of blind forces
of nature, but the product of the Creator.
|