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Yeah, but a lot of religious people would be less hostile to evolution if it were not (erroneously) linked to atheism by such high-profile scientists. Saying that evolution allows you to be an intellectually satisfied atheist simply does not help.

I'm a bit frustrated, actually, at how impreceptive so many people on our side of the debate are on this matter. For some months now, I've been trying to convince people on pro-evolution boards or discussion lists, including FR, that they need to distance themselves from all this atheism stuff.

More often than not, they don't even hear me out. They just say science should be accepted on its merits, that it shouldn't matter that it's getting linked to atheism, that poeple like Dawkins and Provine have every right to their beliefs, etc., etc. etc.

Either they're blind to political reality, or that they care more about atheism than the advancement or science. I can't figure out which.

In 1995, the official Position Statement of the American National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) accurately states the general understanding of major science organizations and educators:

The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable, and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.

Or in the words of the famous evolutionist, George Gaylord Simpson, "Man is the result of a purposeless, and natural process that did not have him in mind."

How do they know the process was unsupervised?

How do they know the process was mindless?

How do they know the process was purposeless?

Their statements are problematic in that they are unscientific. It cannot be proven that evolutionary processes are "purposeless" or that humans were "not in mind." Science cannot demonstrate these assumptions either way ... and that's the problem with their position. They become proponents of a religion of atheism; I say religion because their conclusion is NOT science, it is faith ... just as much as OUR conclusion is faith. Clearly, their definition is diametrically opposed to any concept of a personal creator being involved in the evolutionary process.

To be fair, as was reported by Brendan Sweetman, Ph.D. in a letter to The Kansas City Star August 21, NABT removed the language after it was pointed out by the philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, and the theologian Huston Smith, that their guideline was really an implied atheism and went beyond what the scientific evidence for the theory could show. However, the concept of natural selection (absent a creator) remains the central tenant of evolution as taught in the classrooms. The definition of natural selection includes unsupervised, mindless and purposeless. Clearly, in defining evolution they have left the world of science and entered the world of philosophy and theology, and established atheism (a religion) in our classrooms.

A 1991 Gallup Poll found that 87% of the public believes in God. According to the poll, of the 87% who believe in God, 44% accept the Creation model, and 43% the theistic evolution model. This implies that only one in ten Americans accepts NABT’s purposeless, mindless atheism, which is being taught in our classrooms. Teaching intelligent design differs from literal Biblical creationism in that it is silent regarding who the designer might be, when the designing took place, how it was done or for what purpose. It simply purposes that life was designed.

We can only speculate as to why two young men at Columbine High School gave up all hope and went on a rampage. Do you think that maybe they were taught their world is mindless, purposeless and unsupervised?

Gary Butner, Th.D.