the intellectual enemies of freedom

That seems like a sweeping generalization. You paint with too broad a brush. Gould, Lewontin, Eldredge and many of their supporters strongly disagreed with the determinism of Dawkins, Maynard Smith et al. Disagreement over genetic determinism is a strong undercurrent in the arguments over punctuated equilibria.Some suggested reading:R. C. Lewontin and Steven Rose and Leon J. Kamin, "Not in our Genes", Pantheon Books 1984.Niles Eldredge, "Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory", John Wiley & Sons 1995.Steven Rose, "Lifelines: Biology Beyond Determinism", Oxford University Press 1998.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Darwinists are haters of vanilla ice cream. They either are or they aren't.Perhaps "Darwinists are destroying knowledge about choice" and "Darwinists are haters of vanilla ice cream" both say exactly the same thing. No, you have not made a specific argument. You have emitted a string of ASCII characters. By themselves, such characters are meaningless.You presumably meant something when you wrote the OP. People reading your OP ascribe meaning to it. But there is always a question as to whether what you mean, as author, is the same as what the readers take it to mean.There is a significant body of literature discussing "freedom". Based on the meaning of "freedom", as used in that literature, your assertions appear to be wrong. Several people have pointed this out to you. However, it is always possible that what you actually mean, and what people take you as meaning, are quite different.The usual way to sort out disagreements over meaning, is through dialogue. Somebody explains their disagreement with your statement. You respond by giving arguments to support your statement. As this dialogue proceeds, the readers are able to tease out more of what is your intended meaning. However, it seems that you will have nothing to do with this process. Instead of defending your claim, you keep referring people back to your OP. But there is nothing in your OP that would help.You leave the readers with little choice, but to shake their heads and wonder about your ability at rational discussion.I'm off to refute my earlier assertion about vanilla ice cream.

No. I want you to engage more in dialogue. That's the way to mutual understanding. It might not lead to agreement, but at least people will better understand what you are claiming. Dawkins does not speak for all evolutionists, nor for all scientists. I see no hostility to knowledge in what Dawkins said. He undoubtedly disagrees with some of your views, but that does not make him hostile to knowledge. Gould is disagreeing with Dawkins. But the disagreement has nothing to do with the alleged destruction of knowledge.