January 14, 2005

Evolution Stickers

Nathan Newman thinks the courts should stay away from those textbook stickers "warning" students that evolution is only a theory and should be approached critically. He says a lot about the backlash that court decisions like these can cause, but we can leave that debate for another time, because this bit was far more interesting:
My view is that if students actually looked at so-called "intelligent design" theory side by side with evolution, they will overwhelmingly choose evolution as the more convincing explanation of the origin of life. Court censorship of creation-science actually feeds the idea that evolutionists have something to hide.
That seems right. "Intelligent Design," after all, always struck me as one big concession from the start. ID theorists admit that variation within species can occur, they just stopp short of saying that actual speciation is possible. Um, fair enough, except for the fact that speciation simply means variation and mutation to the point where the two variations can no longer reproduce. Simple as that! So the slippery slope from ID to mainstream evolution is very slippery indeed, and I don't think it would take long for students to see that. Especially if they have stickers telling them to "think critically".
-- Brad Plumer 3:14 PM || ||