(ix) Foreword - The Unmetabolized Darwin [Niles Eldredge]

Darwins evolutietheorie is nog steeds actueel.

"Darwin would be troubled but not especially surprised that the other roughly 50 percent of Americans (perhaps fewer numbers in his native England and on the European continent) still intransigently reject evolution."(x)

" There was a conflict then, and there remains a conflict today, between the scientific account of the history of earth and the evolution of life, on the one hand, and received interpretations of the same in some of the more hard-core Judeo-Christian sects. Darwin remains unmetabolized — the very reason that his name is still so readily invoked so long after he died in 1882."(x)

Binnen een wetenschappelijke context zijn voorspellingen en logische afleidingen mogelijk. Bovendien komen meer complexe leefvormen later.

"Does this “prove” evolution? No, we don’t speak of absolute proof, but we have so consistently found these predicted patterns of similarity to be there after centuries of continual research that scientists are confident that life has evolved." [mijn nadruk] (xi)

"But pursuit of scientific and intellectually valid truth is not really what creationism is all about. Creationism is about maintaining particular, narrow forms of religious belief — beliefs that seem to their adherents to be threatened by the very idea of evolution. In general, it should not be anyone’s business what anyone else’s religious beliefs are. It is because creationism transcends religious belief and is openly and aggressively political that we need to sit up and pay attention. For in their zeal to blot evolution from the ledger books of Western civilization, creationists have tried repeatedly for well over a hundred years to have evolution either watered down, or preferably completely removed, from the curriculum of America’s public schools. Creationists persistently and consistently threaten the integrity of science teaching in America — and this, of course, is of grave concern." [mijn nadruk] (xii)

(xv) Foreword to the Second Edition [John E. Jones III]

"... too many Americans do not understand the constitutional reasons for not advocating religious views in the classroom."(xvi)

(xvii) Preface

"I have made selections from the literature that are representative of the major themes found in the creationism / evolution controversy, and I have attempted to let antievolutionists speak in their own voices.
Unfortunately, most proponents of intelligent design (ID) creationism — Stephen Meyer, David DeWolf, Percival Davis, Dean Kenyon, Jonathan Wells, Walter Bradley, Charles Thaxton, and Roger Olsen — refused, en masse, to grant me permission to reproduce their works in the first edition of this book. Through their representative at the Seattle-based ID think tank, the Discovery Institute, these authors refused permission to reprint readily available material on the grounds that these excerpts from popular books and articles (e.g., opinion-editorial articles and magazine articles) that I sought to reprint would not do justice to the complexity of ID “theory.” This rationale does make one wonder why such apparently inadequate works were published in the first place and continue, in several cases, to be available on or linked to from the Discovery Institute’s Web site. The exception was ID proponent Phillip Johnson, who cordially and promptly granted permission for me to use excerpts from his publication. I thank him for this courtesy." [mijn nadruk] (xviii)

[Waarom zo netjes om toestemming vragen? Citeren mag toch altijd? Of ligt dat in de VS anders? O later zegt ze dat het om reprints ging, dus om hele teksten.]

"It would be dishonest as well as unfair to students to pretend that a public controversy over the teaching of evolution is also a scientific controversy over whether evolution occurred. But a public controversy there is, and its complex foundation in history, science, religion, and politics will, I hope, be interesting to readers."(xix)

(xxiii) Introduction - The Pillars of Creationism

" These “pillars of creationism” include scientific, religious, and educational arguments, respectively, and have been central to the antievolution movement since at least the Scopes trial in 1925."(xxiii)

(1) Part I - Science, Evolution, Religion, and Creationism

(3) Chapter 1 - Science: Truth without Certainty

"Scientists don’t usually talk about proving themselves right, because proof suggests certainty (remember Ashley Montagu’s truth without certainty!). The testing of explanations is in reality a lot messier than the simplistic descriptions given previously. One can rarely be sure that all the possible factors that might explain why a test produced a positive result have been considered." [mijn nadruk] (7)

"In addition, most tests of anything other than the most trivial of scientific claims result not in slam-dunk, now-I’ve-nailed-it, put-it-on-the-T-shirt conclusions, but rather in more or less tentative statements: a statement is weakly, moderately, or strongly supported, depending on the quality and completeness of the test. Scientific claims become accepted or rejected depending on how confident the scientific community is about whether the experimental results could have occurred that way just by chance — which is why statistical analysis is such an important part of most scientific tests."(8)

"Science is quintessentially an open-ended procedure in which ideas are constantly tested and rejected or modified. Dogma — an idea held by belief or faith — is anathema to science.(...)
In principle, all scientific ideas may change, though in reality there are some scientific claims that are held with confidence, even if details may be modified. The physicist James Trefil (1978) suggested that scientific claims can be conceived of as arranged in a series of three concentric circles (see Figure 1.1). In the center circle are the core ideas of science: the theories and facts in which we have great confidence because they work so well to explain nature. Heliocentrism, gravitation, atomic theory, and evolution are examples. The next concentric circle outward is the frontier area of science, where research and debate are actively taking place on new theories or modifications and additions to core theories."[mijn nadruk](8)

"Science gives us reliable, dependable, and workable explanations of the natural world — even if it is good philosophy of science to keep in mind that in principle anything can change."(9)

Het is belangrijk om te weten wat wetenschappers verstaan onder termen als 'feit', 'hypothesis', 'wet', 'theorie' om genakkelijke kreten als 'dat is ook maar een theorie' te voorkomen.

"The word theory is perhaps the most misunderstood word in science. In everyday usage, the synonym of theory is guess or hunch. Yet according to the National Academy of Sciences (2008: 11), “The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence.” A theory, then, is an explanation rather than a guess. Many high school (and even, unfortunately, some college) textbooks describe theories as tested hypotheses, as if a hypothesis that is confirmed is somehow promoted to a theory, and a really, really good theory gets crowned as a law. But rather than being inferior to facts and laws, a scientific theory incorporates “facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses” (National Academy of Sciences 1998: 7). Theories explain laws! To explain something scientifically requires an interconnected combination of laws, tested hypotheses, and other theories." [mijn nadruk] (14)

Hetzelfde geldt voor de evolutietheorie. Dat is echt niet zo maar een inval of giswerk of een geloof, maar een wetenschappelijke theorie zoals alle andere. Ook de beweringen binnen de evolutietheorie zijn op verschillende manieren toetsbaar.

"In addition to the if-then statements predicting what one would find if evolution occurred, one can also make predictions about what one would not find."(15)

"Fortunately, we can test hypotheses about the pattern of evolution — and the idea of descent with modification itself — by using types of data other than the fossil record: anatomical, embryological, or biochemical evidence from living groups. One reason why evolution — the inference of common descent — is such a robust scientific idea is that so many different sources of information lead to the same conclusions." [mijn nadruk] (16)

"The recent explosions of knowledge in molecular biology and of developmental biology are opening up new avenues to test hypotheses of relationships — including those generated from anatomical and fossil data."(18)

Maar niet alleen patronen, ook processen in de evolutie als natuurlijke selectie kunnen getoetst worden. De beweringen van creationisten als dat er een god een intelligente schepper zou bestaan daarentegen kunnen niet wetenschappelijk getoetst worden. Wanneer creationisten feiten naar voren brengen / beweringen doen over de natuur kunnen die uiteraard wel getoetst worden.

(23) Chapter 2 - Evolution

Ook het woord 'evolutie' wordt vaak totaal verkeerd opgevat. Het gaat om een cumulatieve verandering door de tijd heen. Evolutie is een belangrijk onderwerp in allerlei wetenschappen zoals kosmologie, geologie, biologie.

"Evolution in this broad sense refers to the cumulative, or additive, changes that take place in phenomena like galaxies, planets, or species of animals and plants. It refers to changes that take place in groups rather than in individuals and to changes that accumulate over time."(23)

"Whether the proponents of hell or heaven theories finally convince their rivals of the most plausible scenario for the origin of the first replicating structures, it is clear that the origin of life is not a simple issue. One problem is the definition of life itself."(25)

"How, then, can we define life? According to one commonly used scientific definition, if something is living, it is able to acquire and use energy, and to reproduce."(26)

"The origin of life is a complex but active research area with many interesting avenues of investigation, though there is not yet consensus among researchers on the sequence of events that led to the emergence of living things. But at some point in Earth’s early history, perhaps as early as 3.8 billion years ago but definitely by 3.5 billion years ago, life in the form of simple single-celled organisms appeared. Once life originated, biological evolution became possible.(...) Evolution kicks in after there is something, like a replicating structure, to evolve. So the origin of life preceded evolution, and is conceptually distinct from it.(...) Predictably, we know much more about biological evolution than about the origin of life."(27)

Biologische evolutie is dan inderdaad - zoals Darwin het formuleerde - 'descent with modification'. 'Descent' veronderstelt erfelijkheid / replicatie / voortplanting. In dat proces ontstaan geleidelijk aan veranderingen waardoor latere generaties gaan verschillen van eerdere. De tijd die dat kost - 'deep time' genoemd (zo'n slordige 4 miljard jaar) - is moeilijk in te voelen.

"Once nucleated cells developed, sexual reproduction was not far behind. Sexual reproduction has the advantage of combining genetic information from more than one individual, thus providing more variation to the population. Having more variation allows both the individual organism and the population of organisms to adjust to environmental change or challenge."(31)

De kernzaken van biologische evolutie zijn: natuurlijke selectie (uit mogelijke oplossingen degene kiezen die het best een probleem oplost) wordt toegepast op overleven en voortplanting waarin bepaalde genetische varianten die oplossingen zijn en de natuurlijke selectie ontstaat door het kiezen van de genetische variant die het beste past bij / het meest aangepast is aan een nieuwe situatie.

" If the environment of a group of plants or animals presents a challenge — say, heat, aridity, a shortage of hiding places, or a new predator — the individuals that just happen to have the genetic characteristics allowing them to survive longer and reproduce in that environment are the ones most likely to pass on their genes to the next generation. The genes of these individuals increase in proportion to those of other individuals as the population reproduces itself generation after generation. The environment naturally selects those individuals with the characteristics that provide for a higher probability of survival, and thus those characteristics tend to increase in the population over time. "

"Back in Darwin’s day, a contemporary of his invented a sound bite for natural selection: he called it “survival of the fittest,” with fit meaning best adapted — not necessarily the biggest and strongest. Correctly understood, though, natural selection is survival of the fit enough.[mijn nadruk] "(38)

" The tinkering situation, in which a structural problem is solved by taking something extant that can be bent, cut, hammered, twisted, or manipulated into something that more or less works, however crudely, mirrors the process of evolution much more than do the precise procedures of an engineer. Nature is full of structures that work quite well — but it also is full of structures that just barely work, or that, if one were to imagine designing from scratch, one would certainly not have chosen the particular modification that natural selection did."(39)

"Natural selection, adaptation, adaptive radiation, and speciation — these are the major principles that help us explain the pattern and understand the process of evolution. These principles have resulted in an immense proliferation of living things over time that occupy a mind-boggling array of ecological niches."(45)

Over de ordening van al die levende wezens die over miljarden jaren geëvolueerd zijn:

"Ideally, a classification scheme would reflect genealogical relationships of organisms rather than just similarity, because similarity can be relatively superficial. (...)
A late-twentieth-century classification method that has largely replaced the Linnaean system among biologists today is cladistics. Clade is a Greek word for “branch,” and cladistics focuses on the branching of lineages through time. Both cladistics and the classical Linnaean system look at similarities among organisms to establish their relationships, but cladistics seeks in addition to reflect the actual results of evolution."(46)

(53) Chapter 3 - Beliefs: Religion, Creationism, and Naturalism

"But perhaps the most important reason scientists restrict themselves to natural explanations is that the methods of science are inadequate to test explanations involving supernatural forces."(56)

"Special creationism includes the idea that God created living things in their present forms, and it reflects a literalist view of the Bible. It is most closely associated with the endeavor of “creation science,” which includes the view that the universe is only 10,000 years old."(57)

"Because myths encapsulate important cultural truths, anthropologists recognize that they are vitally important to a society and deserve respect. In the anthropological study of cultures, the term myth is not pejorative. Myths are of great importance. Although myths tend to be more common in nonliterate societies, they occur even in developed countries like our own."(58)

Volgt een stuk over scheppingsmythen, met name de christelijke.

"Americans practice a large number of religions, but the religion with the most adherents by far is Christianity. According to several polls, upward of 85 percent of Americans describe themselves as Christian."(62)

"But whether the percentage of Christians is near 80 percent or 70 percent, it is nonetheless true that Christians are the largest religious group in the United States. It is also true that in international comparisons, Americans rank highly in the percentage of adults who believe in God."[mijn nadruk](62-63)

"Antievolutionism in North America is rooted in religiously conservative Christianity; there are few if any activist Jews or Muslims who oppose evolution in North America, and only small antievolution movements in Islamic countries such as Turkey and in the Jewish state of Israel. Although minority religions are growing in the United States, it is clear that Christianity is now, and for the near and intermediate future will be, the predominant American religious tradition. Because of their numbers and their prominence in the antievolution movement, the rest of this chapter will concentrate on Christians." [mijn nadruk] (63)

"Philosophical naturalism relies on science and is inspired by science, but it differs from science in being concerned with rules of conduct, ethics, and morals."(73)

"As will be clear in some of the readings to follow, both supporters and deniers of evolution argue erroneously that because science uses methodological naturalism (and quite successfully), science therefore also incorporates philosophical naturalism. Unfortunately, such confusion makes communication about science and religion, or creationism and evolution, more difficult. "

(77) Part II - A History of the Creationism / Evolution Controversy

(79) Chapter 4 - Before Darwin to the Twentieth Century

[Heel algemeen is het natuurlijk zo dat de bijbel echt niet alles 'wist' en dat door de ontdekking van nieuwe werelden, nieuwe mensen en dieren en planten en regio's en zo verder het gezag van de bijbel en dus van god werd aangetast. Bovendien bleek dat de wereld niet zo volmaakt was geschapen als geloofd, want er waren diersoorten uitgestorven. ]

"The discovery of the New World required the rethinking of many Christian doctrines, as new facts had to be fit into old frameworks."(82)

En dan komt Darwin en publiceert in 1859 na zeer zorgvuldig onderzoek On the origin of species.

"Darwin made two major points in Origin: that living things had descended with modification from common ancestors and that the main mechanism resulting in evolution was the mechanism he had discovered, which he called natural selection (see chapter 2). As described by the historian Ronald Numbers (1998), in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scientists in the United States largely responded positively to Darwin’s ideas. The idea of evolution itself was less controversial than Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection to explain it. "[mijn nadruk](83)

Want de genetische kennis ontbrak nog om te kunnen begrijpen hoe dat proces precies verliep.

"In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, natural selection nonetheless competed with alternate explanations of evolution (Bowler 1988: 7), including a brief revival in popularity of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s views of the inheritance of acquired characteristics."(84)

"Without a better knowledge of how heredity operated, evolution by natural selection seemed no more plausible than Lamarckism and other teleological explanations. "(84)

Experimenten toonden later aan dat het Lamarckisme niet kon kloppen.

"In the 1940s, Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics came together as scientists recognized the powerful support that Mendelian genetics provided to the basic Darwinian model of evolution by natural selection. Called the neo-Darwinian synthesis or neo-Darwinism, it remains a basic approach to understanding the mechanisms of evolution. Neo-Darwinism further has been expanded by the second genetic revolution of the twentieth century, the discovery of the molecular basis of heredity. Since the 1953 discovery by James Watson and Francis Crick of the structure of DNA, the hereditary material of cells, investigation of the molecular basis of life has expanded almost exponentially to become perhaps the most active — and certainly the best funded — area of biological research."[mijn nadruk](85)

Daarnaast was Darwins wetenschappelijke benadering van de dingen puur naturalistisch en dat was anders dan men gewend was:

"Darwin’s view of science restricted scientific explanations to natural causes. In this he was preceded and influenced by changes that had taken place during the previous one hundred years or so in the field of geology (Gillespie 1979: 11). "(85)

"Darwin’s bold naturalism applied to biology proved difficult for many critics to take. Many scientists and theologians objected to Darwin’s removal of the need for divine intervention in the biological sciences — much as critics of uniformitarian geology had protested a century before. "(86)

"Darwin was careful to state how his hypotheses and generalizations could be tested by listing what sort of observations would have to be made to disprove his views — but he also firmly asserted that, until that time, his explanations were the best available.(...)
According to Moore (1979), Darwin’s approach to science itself was one of the major reasons that the concept of evolution by natural selection presented in On the Origin of Species was rejected. Darwin’s great work was denounced as speculative, probabilistic, unsupported, and far from proven. Yet Darwin’s way of doing science — probabilities and all — is much more familiar to us in the twenty-first century than is that of his contemporaries. " [mijn nadruk] (87)

"The perspective of special creationism holds to a sudden, recent, unchanging universe, whereas the perspective of evolution is that of a gradually appearing, ancient, changing universe. It is not surprising that two such different perspectives clash."(87-88)

Darwin las William Paley’s Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802). Paley's metafoor van de structuren in de natuur die leiden tot de conclusie dat er een schepper / god moet bestaan die die structuren maakte zoals een gevonden klokje noodzakelijkerwijs tot de conclusie leidt dat er een klokkenmaker moet bestaan die dat klokje maakte is bekend.

[En een drogredenering natuurlijk.]

"Paley’s view was that God specifically designed complex structures to meet the needs of organisms. (...) Paley contrasted design with chance, and it was clearly as absurd to believe that something like the vertebrate eye could assemble by chance as it was to believe that the parts of a watch might come together and function as a result of random movements of springs and wires. Modern creationists take the same view, equating evolution with chance (in the sense of being unguided and purposeless, and therefore random and chaotic) and contrasting it with guided design.(...) But even before Darwin’s Origin, the argument from design was proving to be not useful in understanding the natural world. "[mijn nadruk](88)

Het is niet zo mooi als Paley dacht: er bestaan ook veel onlogische, zinloze en onfunctionele structuren in de natuur.

" There were many theological issues affected by Darwin’s views, some of which are still being grappled with today."(91)

De religieuze reacties op de Darwins werk / het idee evolutie waren bijzonder divers. Protestanten reageerden anders dan katholieken, maar binnen die groepen waren er net zo goed zeer uiteenlopende opvattingen.

"In Great Britain and Europe, but not in North America, evolution was included matter-of-factly in textbooks and curricula of education systems. In the United States, however, evolution was a topic consistently taught only at the college level — largely absent from the K–12 curriculum. Understanding this difference requires a closer look at American history."(91-92)

" Local control of education began as a necessity, and through custom it became enshrined as a right. To this day, American education remains remarkably decentralized. The federal government has a role to play in education, but that role is dwarfed by the responsibility and activity of states and local school districts. In some states, a large percentage — even a preponderance — of the budget is devoted to education, and states rigidly insist on their right to determine the structure and content of the educational system, with a minimum of interference from the federal government. There is a similar tension between most state governments and local school districts."[mijn nadruk](93)

"The decentralization of American education is a source of wonder to Europeans and the Japanese, for example, who have curricula that are uniform across all communities in their nations. In France, for example, the curriculum in any particular grade is virtually the same from week to week in any classroom in any city. In the United States, even schools within the same district may not teach the same subjects in the same order, or even in the same year. "[mijn nadruk](94)

"But perhaps the most important reason that modern antievolutionism developed here rather than in, say, Europe, was the founding in 1910–1915 of fundamentalism, a Protestant view that stresses the inerrancy of the Bible. Funda mentalism was not successfully exported to Europe or Great Britain, but it formed the basis in the United States for the antievolutionism of the 1920s Scopes era as well as the present day. "(94)

(97) Chapter 5 - Eliminating Evolution, Inventing Creation Science

"As discussed in chapter 4, evolution had become well accepted by the scientific community by the turn of the twentieth century. It thereafter began to be included in college and secondary school textbooks. The late nineteenth century was not a period of extensive religious hostility to evolution, partly because of the efforts of American scientists who accepted evolution and who also were active church members. It was not until the twentieth century that the antievolution movement became organized, active, and effective. Three trends converged to produce the first major manifestation of antievolutionism in the twentieth century: the growth of secondary education, the appearance of Protestant fundamentalism, and the association of evolution with social and political ideas of social Darwinism that became unpopular after World War I. " [mijn nadruk] (97)

[Dat laatste in de ogen van de creationisten dan wel.]

"Fundamentalism is partly a reaction to the theological movement called modernism that began in Germany in the 1880s. Modernism reflected a technique of biblical interpretation called higher criticism, which proposed looking at the Bible in its cultural, historical, and even literary contexts. Creation and Flood stories, for example, were shown by comparison of ancient texts to have been influenced by similar stories from earlier non-Hebrew religions. With such interpretations, the Bible could be viewed as a product of human agency — with all that suggests of the possibilities of error, misunderstanding, and contradiction — as well as a product of divine inspiration."(98)

Fundamentalisten wilden de bijbel juist letterlijk nemen en als gods woord zien, etc. en legden die ideeën vast in een reeks boekjes met de titel The Fundamentals.

"Financed by millionaires who had founded a conservative evangelical college in Los Angeles (the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, now Biola), millions of copies of The Fundamentals were printed and distributed “free of charge, to every pastor, professor, and theology student in America” (Armstrong 2000: 171). "(98)

Wat nu volgt is een beschrijving van en de ervaringen met de Butler Act die in Tennessee doorgevoerd werd in 1925 en later getest werd met de Scopes-rechtszaak:

"“It shall be unlawful for any teacher to teach any theory that denies the Story of Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animal” declared Tennessee’s Butler Act (Larson 2003:54)."(99)

"Scopes lost; the antievolution laws remained on the books, and even increased in number. In the South, states and local school districts restricted the teaching of evolution, and teachers and parents who chose textbooks preferred ones that slighted evolution. The economic pressures were effective: textbook publishers knew they had to remove, downplay, or qualify evolution if they wanted sales, and they did. Books tailored for the Southern markets were of course sold elsewhere, and evolution disappeared from textbooks all over the nation (Grabiner and Miller 1974). Because of the influence textbooks have on curricula, with evolution absent from the textbooks, it quickly disappeared from the classroom. By 1930, only five years after the Scopes trial, an estimated 70 percent of American classrooms omitted evolution (Larson 2003: 85), and the amount diminished even further thereafter."(103)

"This remained the case until the late 1950s, when a federally funded campaign to improve precollege science education brought evolution back into textbooks. As evolution eased back into the science curriculm, antievolutionists reacted and creation science appeared on the scene. "(104)

"If students were going to be taught evolution, antievolutionists argued, students also should be exposed to a biblical view. The frank advocacy of a religious view such as creationism in the public schools would of course be unconstitutional, but creationists reasoned that if creationism could be presented as an alternative scientific view — creation science — then it would deserve a place in the science curriculm. No one was more important in shaping this approach than the late Henry M. Morris."(105)

" Finally, in 1968, forty-three years after the Scopes trial, it was unlawful to ban the teaching of evolution."(111)

"By the early 1980s, equal time legislation had been introduced in at least twentyseven states, ..."(113)

"The plaintiffs assembled a cast of eminent scholars — scientists, theologians, philosophers of science, sociologists, and educators — to make the case that creation science was not science but a form of sectarian religion."(115)

(119) Chapter 6 - Neocreationism

"In 1987, the Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard struck down a Louisiana law requiring equal time for creationism and evolution. Creationism is a religious idea, said the Court, and the First Amendment prohibits the government from promoting religion. Antievolution strategies subsequently were developed that avoided the use of any form of the words creation, creator, and creationism. (...) The avoidance of creation science terminology and the development of creation science – like alternatives to evolution, plus the renaming of the content of creation science as evidence against evolution, constitute what I call neocreationism, which continues into the twenty-first century."(119)

De antievolutionisten noemden het 'abrupt appearance theory.'

"The essence of abrupt appearance theory, therefore, is discontinuity: stars and galaxies appear abruptly, and life and groups of living things appear abruptly, much as in the religious view of special creation. Abrupt appearance theory thus encompasses creation science and other religious views—though it is claimed to have a “totally empirical basis” (Bird 1987a: 13):"(121)

Een andere benadering was de 'intelligent design theory'.

"Intelligent design (ID) is a movement that began a few years before the Edwards decision and solidified in the few years after it. Like creation science and abrupt appearance theory, ID is presented as a scientific alternative to evolution, and it has been more successful than creation science in appealing to Christians who are not biblical literalists. "(122)

"Intelligent design proponents posit that the universe, or at least components of it, have been designed by an “intelligence.” They also claim that they can empirically distinguish intelligent design from design produced through natural processes (e.g., natural selection). This is done through the application of two complementary ideas, one promoted by a biochemist and the other by a philosopher-mathematician. "(123)

De biochemist is Michael Behe. De ander is William Dembski.

"Behe’s idea of irreducible complexity was anticipated in creation science; much as in Paley’s conception, creation science proponents hold that structures too complex to have occurred “by chance” require special creation (Scott and Matzke 2007). Behe, following ID convention, doesn’t mention God directly, but the logical consequence of the irreducible complexity argument is that irreducibly complex structures—unable to be produced by natural causes — are evidence for God’s direct action. "(126)

"As shown in Table 6.1, ID proponents contend that design can be produced both by natural causes (e.g., natural selection has some limited ability to shape organisms to meet some environmental pressures) and by intelligent causes. An intelligently designed phenomenon could be the product of transcendent intelligence such as a creator God, or it could be the product of material agents such as extremely intelligent extraterrestrials — an argument first made, in fact, in the original ID book The Mystery of Life’s Origin. "(128-129)

"Whether or not ID actually has opened fresh insights into nature, there is no doubting the popularity of what ID proponents call cultural renewal. In this focus of ID, the movement seeks to replace the alleged philosophical materialism of American society with a theistic (especially Christian) religious orientation." [mijn nadruk] (131)

" Within a few years of the publication of Darwin on Trial, the rapidly expanding ID movement found a new institutional locus beyond the FTE [Foundation for Thought and Ethics] at the conservative think tank Discovery Institute in Seattle. Perhaps proponents believed that the new ID movement would have more credibility with academics if it were housed in a more neutral institution than the FTE, which has long been associated with evangelical Christianity and thus with creation science. The Discovery Institute rapidly replaced the FTE as the hub for ID activities during the 1990s. " [mijn nadruk] (131)

"Although ID proclaims itself a scholarly movement, its cultural renewal focus is fundamentally incompatible with the openness and flexibility that a scientific theoretical perspective demands. Enamored of an ideological, political, or social goal, it is all too easy to misrepresent or ignore empirical data when they do not support the goal; certainly creation science is infamous for doing so (Scott 1993)."(132)

(145) Chapter 7 - Testing Intelligent Design and Evidence against Evolution in the Courts

Verslag van andere rechtszaken in de VS van de laatste jaren.

"In its first legal outing, then, ID failed to defend itself as a valid science, or even as science at all. It is doubtful, however, that the Kitzmiller decision will completely stop efforts to teach ID. The Kitzmiller case was not appealed, hence the judge’s decision is precedent only in the Middle Federal District of Pennsylvania. It will, however, be highly influential in discouraging the teaching of ID because the trial record was so long and complete, and because the decision was so thorough."(152)

"After ID failed to survive its first court challenge, EAE [Evidence Against Evolution] has become the most popular manifestation of creationism. This approach has not yet been systematically dealt with in the courts, but as EAE policies become more popular, there will be more opposition to them in the future. One case in which EAE was a component was that of a high school biology teacher in Minnesota. "(153)

[Uiteraard vallen al die benaderingen door de mand bij een rationele toetsing. En even vanzelfsprekend zullen religieus gelovige groepen alles doen om weer iets nieuws te verzinnen tegen de evolutietheorie. Een van die dingen is tegenwoordig het zwartmaken van de tegenstanders en het roepen van allerlei bullshit daartoe. ]

"Antievolutionists have long associated evolution with negative historical figures and movements such as Hitler, Stalin, slavery, eugenics — and just about every ism one can imagine. Such demonization of evolution is not new, but in the first decade of the twenty-first century, such accusations seem to be increasing (Coral Ridge Ministries 2007; Ham and Ware 2007; Weikart 2004). In addition to the efforts of the Discovery Institute and the various YEC organizations, the Islamist creationist Harun Yahya has been particularly vociferous in several books published in the late 1990s and early 2000s about the alleged linkage between evolution and social evils like Nazism and communism (Yahya n.d.)
A common theme in such treatments is the familiar confusion of methodological naturalism with philosophical naturalism. Because Darwin (as all scientists) restricted himself to natural causes in explaining evolution, he is accused of promoting the philosophy of naturalism and therefore atheism. The belief is that without God, humankind will suffer moral degeneration and be capable of the kinds of inhuman brutality associated with Hitler and Stalin."[mijn nadruk](161)

[Tja, hoe dom kun je zijn? ]

(165) Part III - Selections from the Literature

"In part 3, I present selections from the antievolutionist literature and responses from the pro-evolution side."(165)

[Dat laat ik verder maar zitten. Daarna volgt nog een uitgebreide literatuurlijst. ]