I’m genuinely confused. Can some of the more experienced IDers explain why critcism of evolutionary theory is supressed within the scientific community?
Comment by Kibitz  February 15, 2006 @ 7:19 pm
It’s really simple. 72% of the most influential scientists in the United States, members of the National Academy of Atheist Sciences, are positive atheists according to this well known poll at Stephen Jay Gould’s website. Another 21% are weak atheists (agnostic). Only 7% believe in God. And as Richard Dawkins famously said:
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: “I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn’t a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.” I can’t help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
— Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 6
Now consider that in almost 60 years of presenting the “overwhelming†scientific evidence for Darwinian theory in public science education, in the legally enforced absence of criticism or alternative hypotheses, they have not put a significant dent in the number of people who swallow the story that evolution was unguided (15% or fewer).
Imagine how many people would swallow the story if it were presented in a critical manner and alternatives to unguided, unplanned evolution were presented? Where would the next generation of atheist scientists come from? My God man, atheism might die out entirely! We can’t have that, now can we? 😉
The theory is suppressed because anyone with a career in science that threatens the metaphysical beliefs of the most senior scientists can kiss his career goodbye. John Davison who comments here frequently, a comparative physiologist with 50 years experience and Emeritus Professor of Biology, published a non-Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis in 1984 and was rewarded with a frozen salary, isolation from students, ostracism in the mainstream journals where he frequently published, eventual coerced retirement, and no more access to a lab. Much more recently, Rick Sternberg, who dared publish an ID sympathetic paper in a biology journal connected to the Smithsonian, was the subject of the establishment’s ire. These are just two cases.
That’s how and why criticism of evolution is suppressed within the scientific community. Any questions?