Today’s look at Our America comes North Carolina:

Beyond science

As Darwin’s theory has evolved over the years, it has become the officially sanctioned creation story of the western world, almost universally affirmed by the academy and successfully defended against heresy. Teachers who express doubts are subject to re-education or even dismissal in extreme cases, while ordinary folks are ridiculed as anti-science (a bad thing) or as closet Christian fundamentalists (a very bad thing.)

Of course, if everything has a natural explanation, then something like Darwin’s theory must be true and science would be the best purveyor of all truth. However, that everything has a natural explanation has never been established. It is, therefore, an assumption, a belief, even, one might say, a faith. [sigh…]

We stand in awe and appreciation of scientific achievements and hope that they continue apace. Creationism is not science and is justifiably ruled out of the science curriculum. But the more we learn about biology the more scientific questions arise.

Those questions are not necessarily weaknesses of the theory nor are they confirmations. Everyone should get along just fine as long as the curriculum sticks to what is known and what scientists think it means. The problem comes when the academy claims that Darwin’s answer is the only possible answer. That is more than science knows.

Virgil Early

Smithfield