In The Myth of Junk DNA , Jonathan Wells discusses the lengths to which the Darwin lobby goes to interfere with new discoveries that do not support their discreditable – and increasingly discredited – cause:
The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a pro-Darwin lobby group that aggressively opposes creationism ,intelligent design, and even scientific criticisms of Darwinism in biology classrooms. In 2002, the pro-ID Discovery Institute published summaries of 44 articles in scientific journals and books that “represent dissenting viewpoints that challenge one or another aspect of neo-Darwinism (the prevailing theory of evolution taught in biology textbooks), discuss problems that evolutionary theory faces, or suggest important new lines of evidence that biology must consider when explaining origins.” The NCSE then contacted the authors of the articles to ask whether they “considered their work to provide scientific evidence for intelligent design” or “considered their work to provide scientific evidence against evolution.” – (p. 100-101)
Of course, the Discovery Institute never claimed that the 44 articles provided “scientific evidence for intelligent design” or “scientific evidence against evolution” … Nevertheless, the NCSE’s misleading questionnaire evoked angry responses from some of the articles’ authors who were understandably indignant at the suggestion that they were pro-ID or anti-evolution.
Actually, those scientists should have just told the Darwin lobby to go soak their heads.
By taking the Darwin lobby seriously enough to robo-react on cue, scientists imply that they agree with its fundamental premise that it has the right to run supporters’ lives, ruin doubters’ lives, and do everyone’s thinking for them, for their own good. There’s a lot of that about these days …
Back to Wells,
It’s possible that the NCSE or others might resort to the same deceptive and intimidating tactic again in response to this book. So I want to make myself very clear: I am not claiming that the authors of articles I cite in this book on the functions of non-protein-coding DNA are pro-ID or anti-evolution. I argue only that their work provides evidence against the notion that most of our DNA is “junk.”
Jonathan, you’ve made that clear. But many people who doubt the increasing spectral Darwin lobby will fall into line as soon as threatened. No one can help them until they help themselves.
People are never given intellectual freedom. They assume it, and then face life, armed with it. Or not.
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