Science is one thing, evangelical atheism another. The speakers should make this distinction clear to their audiences. Instead, they appear to be using their scientific credentials to lend authority to the non-scientific statements they want to make. Once one is out of one's field, one is out of it. It's only fair to say as much.
The truth is that science isn't atheism. In conducting their research, atheistic scientists work alongside colleagues from every major world religion.
If the speakers aren't going to make this distinction clear it would be helpful if journalists did. But that's not likely to happen. Journalists tend to be out of their field when writing any story at all. They make a living reporting on their non-specialties.
The damage this does is that it contributes to the confusion of science with atheism in the popular perception. This is already a confusion anti-science activists do their best to instill.
I have met many people in the USA--religious moderates, not fundamentalists--who view the 'evo versus creo' debate as a fight for supremacy between two camps of fundamentalists. They see a rabid atheistic left and a rabid religious right shouting at each other. The idea that the pro-science side consists of activists who are 'really just promulgating another religion' is credible to them. They read headines out of places like Dover in this light. Their feeling becomes 'a pox on both your houses.' Their desire for moderation makes ID's 'teach the controversy' line look like a reasonable middle ground.
Such people are not, needless to say, well informed about details in this debate. But that's true of most people regarding any story outside their specialty that appears in the news. They get a perception, but very little context.
For professional scientists to play a role scripted for them by the Gishes of the world contributes to this misunderstanding. It does a profound disservice to science.
Their audiences are already conditioned by the 'left' versus 'right' dynamics in democratic political debates. Audiences are used to debates taking place in the arena of opinion, with absolutists on the far left and far right trying to assert absolute answers. They are used to looking to the moderates in both camps to protect them from the zealots in both camps.
But science is not a political opinion; it is not decided by popular vote. It is not a religion; it does not traffic in absolutes. It is completely different from these things in kind.
Science is a pursuit, a method of study. It exists in another category. This needs to be recognized, made clear to all, and preserved.
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Edited by Archer Opterix, : Clarity; typo repair.
Edited by Archer Opterix, : Revision.
Edited by Archer Opterix, : Revision.
Archer
All species are transitional.
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