The "Explore Evolution" Companion
The "Explore Evolution" Companion
Submitted by Wesley R. Elsberry on Sat, 2007-07-14 21:22. The "Explore Evolution" CompanionExplore Evolution is a book and website published under the auspices of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. The book, authored by Stephen C. Meyer, Paul Nelson, Jonathan Moneymaker, Scott Minnich, and Ralph Seelke, seeks to put as many old-time antievolution arguments into the science curriculum as possible, without explicitly mentioning their preferred alternative. This, they hope, will make their text the basis of widespread lawsuit-free K-12 instruction. This is a vain hope. The antievolution arguments themselves are erroneous; there is no valid secular purpose in teaching students falsehoods. Further, the history of these errors is, in ensemble, unique to the religious antievolution movement.
In setting forth their arguments in Explore Evolution, the authors consistently present mistaken, weak, or misleading synopses of concepts in evolutionary science; overlook, misrepresent, or otherwise ignore relevant confirming experiments and data; and present their antievolution objections last, with no attempt to rigorously assess the legitimacy of the criticism.
Students should be taught the best available science, the science that has shown its accountability by presentation to the scientific community, a history of scrutiny and testing by that community, and, in the end, general acceptance of its legitimacy by the scientific community. Evolutionary science has that accountability. The antievolutionary objections of Explore Evolution do not.
This project is aimed at bringing together resources that discuss Explore Evolution, and to provide a detailed compendium of critical analysis that the authors failed to incorporate in their pages.
See also: Open discussion of "Explore Evolution"
