Mar 11 2009
Open-Minded and Political Evolutionists
Darwin has gotten bad press lately. And not just by the wackaloons that believe in Biblical Creationism. It seems that even some evolutionary biologists have been going out of their way to be critical of Darwin and declare their criticism to all the world. Consider the New Scientist cover from January of this year.
While I believe that open criticism of Darwin’s ideas can be a good and essential thing, I don’t think it is always good. If the motive is academic/educational: that is one thing. If the aim is political/commercial: that is another.
Was Darwin wrong? To answer that question, you have to read beyond a headline or single talking-point. You also have to modify the question by adding “about x/y/z.”
A couple weeks after the magazine depicted above came out, I encountered this article: Dinosaur Fossils Fit Perfectly Into The Evolutionary Tree Of Life, Study Finds. There have been hundreds before like it. And are no doubt hundreds more to come. The lead graph states -
A recent study by researchers at the University of Bath and London’s Natural History Museum has found that scientists’ knowledge of the evolution of dinosaurs is remarkably complete.
So Darwin was right? Yes, there are a number of anomalies in the data. Yes, his basic ideas have been refined and expanded upon. But please don’t overlook the massive amounts of evidence supporting the robust theory that Darwin pulled from an ocean of ignorance and placed on the dry land of daylight, where it has remained, though not unchanged. Yet remains.
