What We Know, What We Don't Know

In her September 3, 2005 OpEd column, science textbook publisher Rebecca Keller challenges the scientific elite to teach the controversy surrounding Intelligent Design.

...being willing to consider a design inference, if the data point in that direction, is good science regardless of the philosophical or religious implications. No scientist should ever be so committed to an ideology, whether that ideology is religious or philosophical in nature, that it blinds him to possible interpretations of scientific data. That happened in Galileo's time and it is happening today whenever people close their eyes and plug their ears to design inferences in biology.

(Doh! That one's going to leave a mark.)

It is a common misconception that atheism is not a religious belief. A few lines down Ms. Keller addresses this fallacy:

...the underlying reason this controversy never ends, is that evolution is a creation story; it has huge metaphysical implications no matter how it is taught. How is it less religious or less controversial to teach evolution as it is now, pretending that we somehow know that there is no design? The only way to be religiously neutral on a subject such as evolution is to acknowledge what we know and what we don't know.

What she said.

[HT: Uncommon Descent]