Steven Jay Gould tells us why in Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. After conceding that critics of evolution had a strong case at the Scopes trial, Gould still thinks their intellectual descendants need to be neutralized: “They are a motley collection to be sure, but their core of practical support lies in the evangelical right, and creationism is a mere stalking horse or subsidiary issue in a political program that would ban abortion, erase the political and social gains of women by reducing the vital concept of family to an outmoded paternalism, and reinstitute all the jingoism and distrust of learning that prepares a nation for demagoguery.”
Is this debate about science or cultural control?