The “Theory of Evolution” Is a Misnomer

Abstract

The teaching of evolution in American high schools is once again under siege from creationists. The recent court challenge in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, in York County, Pennsylvania, is a case in point. Almost everyone accepts the occurrence of microevolutionary changes within species, such as selection for mutated genes that confer resistance in insects to pesticides or in bacteria to drugs used to treat disease (e.g., multidrug-resistant strains of tuberculosis have become a problem worldwide).Creationists, however, demand that biology teachers be required to introduce the "theory of intelligent design" (ID) as an alternative to the "theory of evolution" for explaining the diversity of life on Earth and the existence of millions of different species. Opponents of this view hold that ID is not a scientific theory but a religious doctrine that will violate the US Constitution if taught in public schools.Virtually all research biologists oppose the creationist view, although many of these same biologists provide creationists with a target that serves to obfuscate rather than illuminate the breadth and depth of scientific support for evolution envisioned as an unguided, self-organizing process. The target I refer to is "the theory of evolution." It invokes the notion of a single, refutable scientific theory with a veracity that hangs on the correct interpretation of the fossil record or on some other narrowly construed set of biological data