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science under threat
The rise of
the fundamentalist Christian
right in America has seen a troubling increase in attacks on
evolutionary
biology on purely religious grounds. This is a sad reflection both of
the
American education system and the erosion of the church and state
divide as
envisaged by America’s founding fathers.
Under the guise of
‘scientific
creationism’ Christian fundamentalists have increasingly used
‘intelligent design theory’ to
erode the
American public’s confidence in evolution. In May, 2010, a Virginia Commonwealth University survey found that 67% of
Americans believed God either directly created biological life or guided
the process. In November 2004, a
Gallup poll found that only about a third of Americans believe the
theory of evolution is well supported by evidence.
While we can
blame creationists for some of this, the lack of
confidence
also reflects the inability of current Darwinian theory to
explain all the diverse and extraordinary biological phenomena we see
around us
in
nature. Things like stasis and
other inconsistencies of the fossil record,
the
‘Cambrian explosion’, the evolution of irreducibly complex organs
like
the
reptilian eye and mammalian brain, the sudden appearance of
new
species, the
symbiotic interaction between species, the ubiquitous presence of
emotions in multicellular animals, and the complexity and diversity of
innate behaviour and instincts, including our own 'human nature.'
When
teem
theory is added to NeoDarwinian
theory, the new synthesis
creates a stronger and more credible evolutionary paradigm. The unified
teemic paradigm
appears to explain these and other
problematical
phenomena simply and without
contrivance, although creationists may not agree.

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Copyright
2005-2010: D. Vendramini
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