I agree with your observation here, tacticalogic. But the question remains: Is it legitimate to classify a scientific theory in terms of political categories to begin with? When we see that sort of thing happening, it seems to me we have left the precincts of science altogether. Probably few people nowadays would recognize that; for the fact seems to be that many people today do not have a good grip on what science is, and especially what its limitations are.
Yet the claim is famously made nowadays, in certain precincts at least, that if science can't explain a phenomenon, then that phenomenon either (1) doesn't exist (in principle); or (2) science hasn't figured it out yet, but given enough time, it will — which of course is a statement of faith. I don't know where/how this type of thinker rationally draws the line between the recognition of a phenomenon which does not exist, and a phenomenon which eventually will turn out to be explainable by science. But evidently a thinker like Richard Dawkins has no trouble discriminating between the two — but I still don't know what criterion he uses to do that, unless it be a perfectly subjective one....
It is a pity that TToE is less discussed as science today than as a sort of Trojan Horse smuggling in "atheist" troops set on undermining and destroying the core culture of the American people. Whether you personally feel that way, tacticalogic, I don't know. But clearly, a whole lot of folks today do. And arguably, such people have good reasons for thinking the way they do. That is, they are not irrational or insane.
In other words, most of the evo/crevo noise that I hear around here is devoted to arguments about the cultural legacy and social implications of the TToE — i.e., not the theory as science per se, but only in terms of its cultural impact on society — in the eyes of people who may or may not be Christians, but who are concerned that a model built on (undisclosed) presuppositions of materialism/reductionism/determinism + random chance may not fully comprehend the reality of what it is to be human, individually and socially.
I honestly believe that this is what the FR evo/crevo wars are really all about. I don't think there'd be so much contentious disputation if TToE were simply being discussed as a scientific theory as such. But the fact is, certain of its boosters have elevated it into a full-blown cosmology; and it's the cosmology to which such detractors of TToE object.
And with regard to the "standard cosmology" abstracted from TToE, I happen to be one of those objecters, on both Christian and classical grounds. FWIW.
BTW, that cosmology definitely accords more with liberal and progressive attitudes than conservative ones. It is not only a good model of the Zietgeist (i.e., "the spirit of the age" (so to speak), but also a major driver of it.
But we need (I think) to distinguish the science from the preferred cosmologies of its boosters. They are, after all, not the same things at all.
This probably will not happen anytime soon. It looks to me like we live in an age that is akin to "an insane asylum bursting with energy," as Eric Voëgelin put it.
In the words of Pope Paul VI, back in the '70s: The problem with modern man is that he has simply stopped thinking.... He lets his doctrines do his thinking for him, as it were.
I think what Nietzsche meant by "the death of God" is that the supreme doctrine that had guided men for centuries in the West became a de-spirited, empty shell.... For although men could still read about it, and grasp it intellectually, they ceased to resonate to it in their personal lives; they ceased to refer to it as a guide to practical, actual, daily experience.... Doctrine absent renewal by active reflection and experience is effectively a dead doctrine. But its "skeleton" can remain for quite some time after its death — as a sort of fossil....
Thanks, dear tacticalogic, for writing, and for hearing out my "rant" in reply.
But clearly, a whole lot of folks today do. And arguably, such people have good reasons for thinking the way they do. That is, they are not irrational or insane.
There we get into some subjective discussion about what "good" reasons are.
To me, the measure of "good reasons" is that they are the product of "good reasoning", and I'd like to think we can meet that standard a little better than simply not being outright insane.