Journal Addresses “Need” to Teach Evolution

March 2, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

In February of this year Dr. Niles Eldridge announced that he would be editing a new journal entitled Outreach and Education in Evolution According to Today’s News today in the Chronicle of Higher Education it is “designed to bring advances in the subject into classrooms from kindergarten to graduate school.. The journal will help counter the intelligent-design movement and other efforts to challenge the teaching of evolution, Mr. [SIC] Eldredge said in a recent interview. ‘I’m seeing a tremendous need for this. I sense in the country now more of an interest. A lot of the anti-science, anti-evolution stuff is political, and I think it’s coming to the point where good-quality materials for classrooms are in demand.’”

The “need” that DR. Eldredge is referring to may be illustrated by facts later explained in the same article: “high-school teachers — approximately one-third in Minnesota — don’t teach evolution, either because they don’t believe in it or because they don’t know enough about it.” Note that there is no effort to distinguish whether these teachers don’t know or don’t believe. If one unconditionally believes in evolution, there is no difference — If one knows, then one would believe.

Notice also from the top quote that any objection to evolution is classified as “anti-science” and the only recognized basis for objection is political. As long as scientific objections are not recognized, there can be no real counter to them.

The “more of an interest” that Dr. Eldredge is referring to may be illustrated by the huge response of persons seeking to publish in the new journal, so much so that Eldredge and son moved the first issue up one quarter ahead of schedule to September ‘07. But this interest is from those seeking to win people over to evolution, not from a public seeking to know evolution better. According to Telmo Pievani, a noted Italian professor, they must counter because “some conservative and religious leaders have grasped the political power of the tricky ideas of ‘intelligent design.’” Perhaps “tricky” is another way of saying formidable. As Eldredge says, “If the evolution controversy hasn’t come to a school district yet, it will. It’s just a matter of time.”

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