“In fact, science, in the case of evolution, has devolved into a medieval guardianship of power.”

Perhaps. But how would things be any different with another theory? Jealously guarded guilds, cliques, sects, old-boy networks etc. arise because of the basic human truth that people don’t like being proved wrong.

It’s like in the computing world when I read someone’s lament of how Gary Kildall, software pioneer and author of CP/M and later the GEM windowing environment, was thwarted by Bill Gates and his MS-DOS and Windows creations, respectively. “We could be using GEM nowadays instead of that c***py Windows!” they bleat. To which I reply (if only in thought), “Yeah, and you’d be whining about ‘that c***py GEM’ the same as you’re whining about Windows now.”

I’m not entirely comfortable with the Theory of Evolution–no Orthodox Jewish believer can be–but there’s no heroic posture or even much independence of thought involved in disputing it. Like many other bandwagons, the anti-evolution position is largely just another herd people herd themselves into–the non-conformist conformism so aptly satirized by that classic Life of Brian scene (“We’re all different!”). Forgive me for considering other issues to be more worthy of getting worked up about.

Yes, it did change the world. Evolution is a simplistic tautological theory which set back the academy for a hundred years. Its appropriation by eugenicists and social sciences led to horrors justified by science. In fact, science, in the case of evolution, has devolved into a medieval guardianship of power. The real story is much more complex and deserves a true scientific approach.