No alternative theories to evolution [News-Register]

[Submitted 9/7/2005 to the New-Register published 9/17/2005 as Scientists have explored and rebutted Creationism]

To the Editor -

Lately, some readers have written to extoll the idea of teaching creationism or intelligent design alongside evolution because, they assert, these are alternative theories that address perceived weaknesses in evolution.

Over the years, literally hundreds of claims against evolution have made by creationists and “intelligent designerists”.  Yet, every single claim has, in fact, been subjected to scientific inquiry ... and found to be wrong or not applicable (not relating to scientific inquiry).  One can find a compilation of some 600 claims and read for each claim a summary of the investigation rebutting them here.

There is no alternative scientific explanation, not a bad one, nor a weak one, nor even one that scientists are too close-minded to consider: on the contrary,  scientists have looked at every claim in order to see if there was anything there!

This is a serious issue because evolution rests on the underlying science of physics, chemistry, etc.  Once, as a society, we choose to be relativists about evolution and leave it up to each school kid’s opinion, then that is a slippery slope: to reject evolution requires rejecting the other underlying science and this becomes rejection of science in general over time.

Instead of using science to tell us if a species is threatened with extinction, we’ll ask the politically appointed Interior Secretary to choose.  We’ll ignore global warming.  We’ll decide more arsenic in water is cleaner water.  Whatever!  After all, it is all just opinion!

So then those with political power will decide what the "facts" are in order to justify pre-ordained policies instead of politics being used to determine what policies should address the facts.