Expelled’s Caroline Crocker, now executive director of AITSE, and author of Free to Think, describes how she first began to get hints that she was decidedly not free to think, in biology. She asked,
Control mechanisms in cells are like intricate circuit boards; how could something like this evolve through random mutation? This was a puzzle for me and I knew I needed some help in figuring it out. Being a graduate student I was used to asking questions, so I asked those around me … my fellow students and my supervisors. It was frustrating to find that nobody had a satisfactory answer and it did not appear that they had even given the matter much thought. Many shrugged their shoulders and mumbled something about it taking a long time. I quickly got the message that these were questions I should not be asking.
– Free to Think, (p. 17)
But she did keep asking, so … and it isn’t much different for the undergrad students.
Sources point out that Crocker’s mistake was failing to see that the good evolutionist does not ask questions unless an answer, however implausible, is readily available that supports the Darwinist viewpoint. This is as true for the self-organization guys as anyone else. Pointing out the implausibility is a red flag around a student’s career. As a result, students are routinely warned today to say nothing that suggests that they won’t go along with just anything – but not to appear enthusiastic about it. The right survival stance is: Clever enough for the lab work, too stupid to doubt the basic premises, willing to front the party line.