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Back in Seattle, around the comer from the Discovery Institute, Stephen Meyer

游客2025-04-25  4
问题    Back in Seattle, around the comer from the Discovery Institute, Stephen Meyer offers some peer-reviewed evidence that there truly is a controversy that must be taught. "The Darwinists are bluffing," he says over a plate of oysters at a downtown seafood restaurant. "They have the science of the steam engine era, and it’s not keeping up with the biology of the information age."
   Meyer hands me a recent issue of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews with an article by Carl Woese, an eminent microbiologist at the University of Illinois. In it, Woese decries the failure of reductionist biology—the tendency to look at systems as merely the stun of their parts—to keep up with the developments of molecular biology. Meyer says the conclusion of Woese’s argument is that the Darwinian emperor has no clothes.
   It’s a page out of the antievolution playbook: using evolutionary biology’s own literature against it, selectively quoting from the likes of Stephen Jay Gould to illustrate natural selection’s downfalls. The institute marshals journal articles discussing evolution to provide policymakers with evidence of the raging controversy surrounding the issue.
   Woese scoffs at Meyer’s claim when I call to ask him about the paper. "To say that my criticism of Darwinists says that evolutionists have no clothes," Woese says, "is like saying that Einstein is criticizing Newton, therefore Newtonian physics is wrong." Debates about evolution’s mechanisms, he continues, don’t amount to challenges to the theory. And intelligent design "is not science. It makes no predictions and doesn’t offer any explanation whatsoever, except for God did it."
   Of course Meyer happily acknowledges that Woese is an ardent evolutionist. The institute doesn’t need to impress Woese or his peers; it can simply co-ocpt the vocabulary of science— "academic freedom," "scientific objectivity," "teach the controversy"—and redirect it to a public trying to reconcile what appear to be two contradictory scientific views. By appealing to a sense of fairness, ID finds a place at the political table, and by merely entering the debate it can claim victory. "We don’t need to win every argument to be a success," Meyer says. "We’re trying to validate a discussion that’s been long suppressed."
   This is precisely what happened in Ohio. "I’m not a PhD in biology," says board member Michael Cochran. "But when I have X number of PhD experts telling me this, and X number telling me the opposite, the answer is probably somewhere between the two."
   An exasperated Krauss claims that a truly representative debate would have had 10,000 pro-evolution scientists against two Discovery executives. "What these people want is for there to be a debate," says Krauss. "People in the audience say, Hey, these people sound reasonable. They argue, ’People have different opinions, we should present those opinions in school.’ That is nonsense. Some people have opinions that the Holocaust never happened, but we don’t teach that in history."
   Eventually, the Ohio board approved a standard mandation that students learn to "describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." Proclaiming victory, Johnson barnstormed Ohio churches soon after notifying congregations of a new, ID-friendly standard. In response, anxious board members added a clause stating that the standard "does not mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design." Both sides claimed victory. A press release from IDNet trumpeted the mere inclusion of the phrase intelligent design, saying that "the implication of the statement is that the ’teaching of testing of intelligent design’ is permitted." Some pro-evolution scientists, meanwhile, say there’s nothing wrong with teaching students how to scrutinize theory. "I don’t have a problem with that," says Patricia Princehouse, a professor at Case Western Reserve and an outspoken oppnent of ID. "Critical analysis is exactly what scientists do."  [br] What does Woese mean when he answers back for his remark "... evolutionists have no clothes?"
选项 A、His criticism of Darwinists should not be understood as the denial of it
B、Clothes themselves are not what evolutionists are interested in
C、Einstein is right when he is criticizing Newtonian physics
D、Einsteinian physics is an improvement on Newtonian physics
答案 A
解析 从文中第4段“Debates about evolution’s mechanisms, he continues, don’t amount to challenges to the theory”可以看出Woese批评Darwinists，但并不是在否认它。
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