April 17, 2004

Evolution as Cargo Cult

Over at Matthew Yglesias' blog I've been commenting on my beef with evolution. I worry about the state of science because I find people using evolution as something as a cargo cult in their war on religion. They don't want to actually go through the hard work of proving their theories scientifically so they use rhetoric, disdain, and propaganda as substitutes. This upsets me because it is a very high form of hypocrisy and ultimately damaging to science. The truth is that evolution is probably right but before we cast out people to the outer darkness for questioning the new holy writ, we really ought to go through the tedious procedure of proving the darn thing is true.

I think that, ultimately, the ID folks are tilting at windmills but if they get people to pay attention and actually do the work of proving evolution up and down the scale from biochemical processes to gross structures and entire species, they've done as much of a service to science as the anti-federalists did to the creation of the US Constitution.

Posted by TMLutas at April 17, 2004 02:56 PM