Saturday, February 25, 2006
Curb Your Dogma
The discovery in China of a furry, beaverlike animal that lived at the time of dinosaurs has been reported in countless blogs and online news articles as having "overturned more than a century of scientific thinking about Jurassic mammals."
In all these comments and articles, one thing is conspicuously absent: That's any hint of an accusation by scientists that this new evidence must be suppressed because it challenges scientific dogma about Jurassic mammals.
How do the intelligent design theorists account for the open-armed response to this new fossil evidence -- which overturns a full century of scientific thinking -- with their own fable of a close-minded scientific establishment bent on the promotion of dogma and the suppression of new ideas?
In all these comments and articles, one thing is conspicuously absent: That's any hint of an accusation by scientists that this new evidence must be suppressed because it challenges scientific dogma about Jurassic mammals.
How do the intelligent design theorists account for the open-armed response to this new fossil evidence -- which overturns a full century of scientific thinking -- with their own fable of a close-minded scientific establishment bent on the promotion of dogma and the suppression of new ideas?
