The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright:
but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness.
Proverbs 15:2
"Evolutionists have had complete domination of public school science for decades. They can’t believe that a sizable percentage still don’t accept evolution.
Ryan Dunk at Syracuse University is dumbfounded. He said on his blog last September,
Despite over a half century of education reforms aimed at better science instruction, nearly 40 percent of Americans reject the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution.In both articles, Dunk commits numerous logical fallacies and propaganda tactics as if taken right out of the NCSE talking points:
- Equivocating about the meaning of “evolution” by calling it change over time: “how organisms have changed over time, how and if humans have changed over time….”
- Associating acceptance of evolution with scientific literacy: “With a minority of American adults fully accepting evolution, the fundamental principle of biological science, this research provides guidance for educators to improve science literacy.” He also associates Darwin indoctrination (it’s indoctrination because no criticisms are allowed) with “better science education.”
- Non-sequitur of equating evolution acceptance with understanding the nature of science. “Understanding the nature of science is the greatest predictor of evolution acceptance in college students, a new study [by Dunk and friend] finds.”
- Bluffing by trying to make his biased survey look like scientific research: “Specifically, I am interested in exploring how various educational, psychological, personal, and sociodemographic factors impact an individual’s acceptance or rejection of evolution” and publishing a paper entitled “A multifactorial analysis of acceptance of evolution” in a very pro-Darwinian journal, Evolution: Education and Outreach.
- Bandwagon by using “a commonly used questionnaire called Measure of the Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE)” — used by whom? Evolutionists, of course, with rigged questions.
- Straw Man by suggesting that Darwin doubters are all ignorant of the nature of science. He says, “the most significant factor that influenced acceptance of evolution in our sample was an understanding of the nature of science.” But there are numerous conflicting philosophies of science; which one did he use?
- Ridicule by implying that Darwin skeptics are science deniers: “It is our hope that these studies, followed by a larger study comparing science and non-science students, will help us to develop curricular interventions that can meet students where they are and help lead them towards an understanding and acceptance rather than denial of scientific knowledge.”
- Fear-mongering by implying that acceptance of evolution (“the nature of science”) matters for the future of our planet: “Such wide-spread science denial can have dire consequences.” Also, the claim that denial could have “a chilling effect if college students fear their religious identities will not be respected by science faculty.”
- Either-Or Fallacy by failing to include Darwin skeptics and intelligent design advocates who are not Biblical creationists: “According to Gallup polling, the number of Americans who reject scientific explanations of human origins in favor of religious creationism hit an all-time low. Since 1982, the first year they asked this question, the number of people who accept evolution has never been higher.”
- Half-Truth by twisting data points gathered from interviews into predictors of evolution acceptance: “In this study, Dunk and colleagues used statistical models to pinpoint how an individual’s understanding of science, knowledge of evolution, personality traits, religiosity and demographic traits predict student acceptance of evolution.”
- Big Lie by caricaturing the empirical data as “overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution” and calling evolution “the unifying explanatory framework of biology.” Contrariwise, medical science and biomimetics have no use for Darwinism, and neither does much of molecular biology when it comes to describing molecular machines, which former NAS president Bruce Alberts called “the biology of the future”. The late NAS scientist Phillip Skell studied the use of evolution in scientific papers and found that most of the time evolution was added as “an interesting narrative gloss” after the scientific work was done. Consistent reporting on CEH finds evolution language inversely proportional to the amount of detail studied in biological research." CEH
