HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN:

Dumbing down evolution to kill it: On Darwin's birthday, vocal opponents of his theory fundamentally misunderstand what they don't believe in (Edward Humes, February 12, 2007, LA Times)

Real evolutionary theory explains how life forms change across generations by passing on helpful traits to their offspring; a process that, after millions of years, gradually transforms one species into another. This does not happen randomly but through nature's tendency to reward the most successful organisms and to kill the rest. This is why germs grow resistant to antibiotics and why some turtles are sea animals and others survive quite nicely in the desert, and why dinosaurs -- and more than 99% of all other species that have ever lived on Earth -- are extinct.

The environment changes. The recipe for survival changes with it. And life changes to keep up -- or it dies. Darwin's signature insight is both brilliant and elegantly, brutally simple.

The real theory of evolution does not try to explain how life originated -- that remains a mystery. The truth is that many scientists accept evolution and believe in God -- and in a natural world so complete that it strives toward perfection all on its own, without need of a supernatural designer to keep it going.

When we were kids our Grandfather was driving us through the Bowery and pulled the car over to the curb, hopped out in his immaculate three-piece wool suit and went over for a chat with one of the bums. When he got back in the car, we asked, mystified, why he'd wanted to talk to the guy: "Oh, he's a friend. I went to Harvard Law School with him."

Darwinists remind you of that bum these days. This poor guy is reduced to claiming for the theory only those notions that are truisms and were widely accepted even in the 18th Century, while conceding most of the important criticisms: Evolution is the process by which life changes; we have no idea how the process works; but as a result some species don't survive, others do; germs stay germs and turtles stay turtles; and God may well steer the process, as we know that Intelligent Design does.

It'd be sad if it weren't so funny.

MORE:
Believing scripture but playing by science's rules (Cornelia Dean, February 12, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

There is nothing much unusual about the 197-page dissertation Marcus R. Ross submitted in December to complete his doctoral degree in geosciences here at the University of Rhode Island.

His subject was the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago. The work is "impeccable," said David E. Fastovsky, a paleontologist and professor of geosciences at the university who was Ross's dissertation adviser. "He was working within a strictly scientific framework, a conventional scientific framework."

But Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a "young earth creationist" -- he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.

For him, Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one "paradigm" for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, "that I am separating the different paradigms."

He likened his situation to that of a socialist studying economics in a department with a supply-side bent. "People hold all sorts of opinions different from the department in which they graduate," he said. "What's that to anybody else?"

But not everyone is happy with that approach. "People go somewhat bananas when they hear about this," said Jon C. Boothroyd, a professor of geosciences at Rhode Island.

The heavy hand of Darwinist orthodoxy (DAVID KLINGHOFFER, Feb. 12, 2007, THE JERUSALEM POST)

The specter of academic discrimination against an unpopular minority should have a special resonance in the Jewish community. Or so you would think.

Between World War I and the end of World War II, Jews in the United States lived through a period of anti-Semitism notable for its impact on academia. According to Leonard Dinnerstein in his comprehensive history Anti-Semitism in America, the number of Jewish professors nationwide hovered around 100.

Partly, this discrimination was driven by fears that Jews, widely associated with "internationalism" and "Bolshevism," would corrupt gentile students, subverting their Christian beliefs and Anglo-Saxon values.

Those times are long past - for Jews. But another controversial minority is having a rough time of it in today's academic world. It's not an ethnic or religious minority but an intellectual one. I refer to those beleaguered scientists, affiliated with certain universities and research institutions, who doubt Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 12, 2007 12:00 AM