"Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage."
"Creationism" is indeed BS. What bothers me is that the various skeptics groups that help deflate Fundamentalist Creation mythology tend to attack UFOs with equal vigor -- and they lie, whether by intentional omission of data, willful ignorance or simple disingenuity.
There's no need to duck the "points" made by so-called Creation Scientists; they're intentionally fabricated by feeble-minded people for feeble-minded people. The UFO problem is much more complex. Debunkers typically attack the existence of unexplained objects in our skies by attempting to confuse the core phenomenon with the mythology it has spawned. This goes generally unquestioned by academe; you never read articles in science magazines decrying the limp, anthropomorphic biases that show up again and again in anti-UFO literature.
Ideally, politically inclined groups such as CSICOP would like to stereotype "UFO believers" as mindless dolts who also believe an omnipotent being created the world in seven days and molded humans in his own image. My own findings reveal a genuine -- but unfocused -- dissatisfaction with Darwinism among some "UFO types." But the issues under question are generally scientific, not metaphysical -- even if the controversy shares a common origin. It appears most of us share a common need to be part of something larger, whether that something is a bearded caricature of ourselves or a galactic supercluster.
For example, many in the UFO "community" advance the idea that Homo sapiens was genetically facilitated or modified by an extraterrestrial intelligence. To some, this sounds preposterous, little better than Creationist rhetoric. But at worst, it's mere bad science, even if the proposed explanation strives to turn the human legacy into something bigger than it really is . . . and, of course, to some, the idea that we're basically livestock at the mercy of superintelligent ETs seems downright degrading. (I personally haven't dismissed alien genetic intervention, and propose taking a long, hard look at the human genome just in case . . .)
Carl Sagan lamented Fundamentalists' distaste with the idea that humans were, ultimately, forged in the nuclei of exploding stars. Sagan found the idea awe-inspiring, eclipsing the sense of the numinous claimed by the religiously inclined. An agnostic, I share Sagan's sense of wonder. Which is partially why I wince at the tactics of so many self-proclaimed debunkers, who act not in defense of truth, but to deify contemporary paradigms at the exclusion of all else.
Sure, it's nice that they trash Creationists. But why the Pavlovian need to dispel legitimate unknown phenomena?
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