I went to the woods...

Here is the first evolutionist I know of who's realized that people aren't fighting with evolution as science, but as a worldview (thus evolutionism). Here are a few quotes from the article (I'm afraid it's rather obviously anti-creationism more than anything else) that make me want to read his book. Even the opinions cited as opposing his argument demonstrate the perceived view that there are demonstrated sides that are against each other...if so, then she readily admits that the science has been turned into a set of religious principles (or that the religion has been turned into a set of scientific principles, and I have a difficult time believing that she thinks that religious principles could easily be transformed into truly scientific principles -- though, maybe this is the confused notion that is driving the whole debate...I need to think about this more).

------------
While their ideas varied, writes Ruse, ''progress was the backbone of it all'' - even though that value, he believes, cannot be wholly justified, or properly derived, from actual evolution by natural selection.

But Ruse asserts that popular contemporary biologists like Edward O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins have also exacerbated the divisions between evolutionists and creationists by directly challenging the validity of religious belief - Dawkins by repeatedly declaring his atheism (''faith,'' he once wrote, ''is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate''), and Wilson by describing his ''search for objective reality'' as a replacement for religious seeking.

All told, Ruse claims, loading values onto the platform of evolutionary science constitutes ''evolutionism,'' an outlook that goes far beyond the scientific acceptance of evolution as a means of explaining the origins and development of species. Provocatively, Ruse argues that evolutionism has often constituted a ''religion'' itself by offering ''a world picture, a story of origins, and a special place for humans,'' while its proponents have been ''trying deliberately to do better than Christianity.''

posted by Nick 5/01/2005 06:15:00 PM