Unbelievers Unwelcome in the Science Lab : Evolution: Darwinists are really fundamentalists who would use their enormous clout to exclude creationists.
Forrest Mims, a writer for Scientific American, recently admitted to one of the magazine’s editors that he is “a non-believer in evolution.” For this heresy he lost his job with the prestigious publication, even though the editors agreed that his articles, which had nothing to do with evolution, were excellent.
Mims was sent packing because his very presence was perceived as a threat to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Even if he never published a word about evolution, creationists might have cited him as a well-informed skeptic. If they did, angry Darwinists would cancel their subscriptions--and Scientific American knows who butters its bread. So Mims became a casualty in a religious war.
Many Darwinists insist that people like Mims have to be kept out of science because their skepticism about evolution is inconsistent with scientific objectivity. One biology professor who defended the magazine’s action reasoned that “I would be against having such a person writing a column, because at the base, this philosophy could enter everything one does in science.”
The objectivity of science is not protected by imposing a religious test for admission to the profession, however, but by the rigorous program of testing and criticism that we call the scientific method. That raises the question: Is evolution one of the things scientists may criticize, or do critics risk banishment from the profession?
The key to understanding what is at stake is to know what scientists mean by evolution. Nobody doubts that a certain amount of evolution occurs. For example, bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics and bugs to insecticides. Evolution in this narrow sense can be demonstrated, and so it is uncontroversial.
Evolution, however, also stands for a much bigger idea. To Darwinists, it means an all-embracing philosophical system in which mircoorganisms evolved from non-living chemicals and eventually became plants, insects, reptiles, monkeys and humans--with no divine input whatsoever. The tree of life grew of its own accord, by random genetic changes and survival of the fittest, without guidance from any creator. As the notable Darwinist George Gaylord Simpson put it: “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.”
In Darwinist usage, therefore, “evolution guided by God” isn’t evolution at all. It is creationism, at least if God took any action to perform this guiding. By this definition, most Americans are creationists without realizing it. They believe that the Earth is billions of years old and that life evolved gradually from simple to complex forms. But they also believe that evolution was a means by which God carried out a plan to create humans. For tactical reasons, Darwinists don’t rush to tell all these people that they are missing the point, but all in good time. Let people first learn that evolution is a fact. They can be told later what evolution means.
Another term that needs to be carefully defined is science. Most people believe that science involves proof by experiments and observation. And whatever their religious or philosophical bias, all reasonable people accept the results of repeatable scientific experiments. If they don’t, they are rightly regarded (or disregarded) as flat-Earthers.
In Darwinist hands, however, science includes a philosophical bias that is essentially religious in character. Darwinists begin by assuming that science excludes the possibility of a creator. They conclude that purely material processes (like random mutation and selection) must have created all the wonders of the living world, because nothing else was available to do the job.
Unfortunately, the claim that natural selection has the required creative power is not supported by experiments. Furthermore, the fossil evidence is dead against Darwinist expectations. It shows not gradual evolutionary transformations, but the sudden appearance of new forms that thereafter remain fundamentally unchanged. If Darwinists actually had to prove their theory, they could only make a most undignified retreat. So instead of proof, they fall back on a loaded definition of science and tell us that only kooks believe proof is necessary.
The Mims episode shows us that science is beset by religious fundamentalism--of two kinds. One group of fundamentalists--the Biblical creation-scientists--has been banished from mainstream science and education and has no significant influence. Another group has enormous clout in science and science education, and is prepared to use it to exclude people they consider unbelievers. The influential fundamentalists are called Darwinists.
