From Forbes:
“How The War On Science Affects Us All”
The reason is that Darwin’s theory is science—a subject taught in public schools—while intelligent design is a matter of faith, which is not. Darwin’s theory produces testable hypotheses that can be falsified through experiment. Creationism does not. It is a matter of belief, not a subject for investigation.
There is also a practical consideration. We expect our schools to prepare students so to contribute to future society. If we want our kids to be able to develop new antibiotics that can treat resistant infections or to improve the genetic algorithms that make our economy more efficient, then Darwin’s theory, not creationism, is something they have to know. More.
This is a good example of the science writing vice of waving pom poms for science. Horizontal gene transfer, not natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinian evolution), may well be the major way that bacteria acquire antibiotic resistance. It is much quicker and easier, for one thing, to borrow existing information than to develop it oneself. And nature offers little copyright protection and enforces no rules against plagiarism.
See, for example, Bacteria develop antibiotic resistance by using DNA from dead bax
Bacteria use small spear to acquire antibiotic resistant genes
Horizontal gene transfer: Jumping gene jumped to all three domains of life?
Horizontal gene transfer goes big time (“The fact that horizontal gene transfer happens among eukaryotes does not require a complete overhaul of standard evolutionary theory, but it does compel us to make some important adjustments. …” No. It really IS a big overhaul.)
But, you know, it is no use asking some people to lose the pom poms. They’d just waste police time getting arrested for public nudity.
Here’s the frustrating part: There really is a war on science. See, for example, Boko Haram (Western education is forbidden). But you won’t be hearing anything about that war on science from the pom poms because it is a real war, not a half-time show.
Note: Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is an unwelcome discovery for Darwinian evolution because 1) In any given case where a change can be identified, the possibility that HGT is the cause must be investigated. (Cheerleading for Darwin instead feels good but isn’t science.) 2) HGT doesn’t claim to answer the question of where the information originally came from; it just identifies places it has reached. 3) HGT wasn’t developed, as Darwinian evolution was, to provide a naturalist account of origins, and doesn’t particularly contribute to one. It only attempts to account for evidence by tracking the transfer of genetic information.
Follow UD News at Twitter!