Darwinism is grossly overrated

Things have gotten so bad that knowledge and even acceptance of Darwinism is now considered by many to be a litmus test for "scientific literacy." Consider the following examples:

(1) The University of California denied accreditation to a Christian high school's biology course because the textbooks criticize Darwinism and say things like, "If the conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."

(2) The Executive Summary of the 2005 Fordham Foundation (no connection to Fordham Univ.) report on state science standards gave the Kansas evolution standards a rating of "not even failed" because they included weaknesses of Darwinism.

(3) An organization with the misleading grand-sounding title "National Center for Science Education" is dedicated exclusively to promoting the teaching of Darwinism and suppressing the teaching of criticisms of Darwinism. Also, many state Darwinist organizations have misleading titles like "Ohio Citizens for Science."

(4) A New York Times op-ed piece that is critical of the Kansas evolution standards is titled, "How to Make Sure Children Are Scientifically Illiterate."

(5) We keep hearing fearmongering warnings that American ignorance and rejection of Darwinism threatens the country's international technological competitiveness.

The irony of all this is that Darwinism is one of the most useless theories around. I assert that with the exception of micro-evolution, which has actually been observed, knowledge of evolution is not necessary in the study of biology. In an article titled, "Does Nothing in Biology Make Sense Except in the Light of Evolution?", Jerry Bergman says,

Although Darwinists often talk about the central importance of “evolution” in gaining a basic understanding of the natural world, my research reveals that the daily work of both scientific education (and in most scientific research), evolution is rarely mentioned or even a concern. This has been my own experience as a research associate involved in cancer research in the department of experimental pathology at the Medical College of Ohio and a college professor in the life and behavioral science area for over 30 years.

The Talk.Origins website's statement that "teaching biology without evolution would be like teaching chemistry without the periodic table of the elements" is a gross exaggeration:

Claim CA042:
Evolution does not need to be taught in science classes. The important parts of biology, such as how organisms function, how they are classified, and how they interact with one another, do not depend on evolution.

Response:
Biology without evolution is natural history, not biology. There is a great deal of important information in natural history that should be taught, but evolution is the unifying idea that ties it all together, allowing one not only to know the facts but to understand them and to know where the facts come from. Teaching biology without evolution would be like teaching chemistry without the periodic table of the elements.

There is nothing more fundamental to biology than Linnaean taxonomy, and this taxonomy preceded Darwinism and even Lamarckism. A more recent classification system, cladistic taxonomy or cladics, is conceptualized in terms of evolution, but such conceptualization can be regarded as just a convenience. And even if an important biological concept is considered to be part of evolution theory, scientists can use the concept even while believing that all or part of evolution theory is untrue, in the same way that engineers use complex-number mathematics in the analysis of AC circuits and aerodynamics while being aware that the analysis has no physical relationship to reality. For example, in the Joukowski transformation of conformal mapping, the aerodynamics of a rotating circular cylinder is used to analyze the aerodynamics of wing airfoils. And in AC circuit analysis, the complex-plane impedance vector in particular has no direct relationship to the physical entities of the circuit.