Denying evolution : creationism, scientism, and the nature of science

Denying Evolution aims at taking a fresh look at the evolution–creation controversy. It presents a truly "balanced" treatment, not in the sense of treating creationism as a legitimate scientific theory (it demonstrably is not), but in the sense of dividing the blame for the controversy equally between creationists and scientists—the former for subscribing to various forms of anti-intellectualism, the latter for discounting science education and presenting science as scientism to the public and the media. The central part of the book focuses on a series of creationist fallacies (aimed at showing errors of thought, not at deriding) and of mistakes by scientists and science educators. The last part of the book discusses long-term solutions to the problem, from better science teaching at all levels to the necessity of widespread understanding of how the brain works and why people have difficulties with critical thinking. "In the United States, more than half the population believes in a more or less literal reading of the Bible, and the overwhelming majority of people (including a large proportion of high school science teachers!) reject the idea that humans evolved from "lower" forms of animals and that Earth is billions of years old. ... It is not reasonable to blame only the public for something that it became more and more evident was an abysmal failure of our educational system, and hence of us as scientists and educators. ... Here, my interest is not so much in debunking creationist claims (although there is some of that, of course), but mostly in understanding the reasons for the problem itself. I think creationism is more properly called evolution denial ... Creationism is not a viable theory of anything, and it is certainly not a scientific theory. In the scientific community it ceased being a reasonable option for explaining life's diversity as soon as Darwin's Origin of Species became available to the public in 1859. Rather, creationism is really a form of denial, analogous to the denial of the Holocaust by some pseudohistorians, or the denial of environmental problems by so many pundits and special-interest groups. In this book ... I will discuss the many strands of anti-intellectualism that have plagued American society almost from its inception, as well as the reasons for the failure of teachers to educate students about science as a method of discovery (instead of a list of facts as boring as a telephone directory). I will show the fallacies committed by scientists themselves when dealing with creationists, and examine the possibility that the human brain was simply not well designed (ironically, by natural selection) to think critically. ... The creation-evolution debate, as I hope to make clear in this book, is not therefore a scientific debate--far from it. It is a particular instance of a broad cultural war between conservative and progressive forces, between a priori ideologies and the spirit of inquiry, between ignorance and education."--Prologue