Critical Review Of Oppressed By Evolution
Matt starts by acknowledging that all living things on earth descended from the ancestors who lived billions of years ago. He comments on the theory by Darwin that opposes evolution theory. According to Darwin, we are all blood kin to other organisms and we are closely related to great apes compared to spiders. The evolution theory reads the shared features between families. Thus, this means people are not unique from other family groups (Matt, 78). Matt also comments on the opposition of Christians on the idea of evolution. Christians have placed a strong opposition to discontinue biologists from teaching people about evolution. They have also tried to oblige teachers to handle evolution as a mere theory and not a fact.
Matt strongly believes that the religious antievolutionists will continue fighting biologists on the issue of evolution, thus a need to refight them for a period of one to two centuries (Matt, 80). Matt disagrees with the reasons brought by Christian antievolutionists to oppose evolution. For instance they claim that evolution issue is just a struggle between the godless and the creationists. Some Christians oppose the idea of evolution simply because it contradicts the bible. And according to him not every word in the bible is true. Other Christians oppose the idea of evolution because it puts human beings to the state of beasts.
Matt also recorded Robert’s view that science is politics where people just come with ideologies. And it is nature controls our minds limiting our freedom to question the authority. Matt also included the views of some people concerning science for example scholar Ania Grobicki’s view on science and he described science as a way of describing nature, reality and how things work effectively more so in production of goods and profits but it is unsatisfactory in other respects.
After a long lobby between local evolutionists and conservative evangelicals on the issue of evolution, Matt records that Warren Nord concluded that Darwin’s theory undermines religious conceptions of purpose in nature. He added that modern science is not neutral with religious views. Therefore according to Nord, when neo-Darwinian evolution is taught, religious accounts of nature must also be taught and that is the only way to be neutral with evolution (Matt, 82). However, Matt argues out Nord’s claim that nature expresses God’s purpose, and he regards it as a non scientific claim that cannot be tested scientifically. According to him, science must be testable. Therefore every claim that cannot be tested, science will shrug.
Matt at last develops a strong argument against science. He says, science has nothing to deal with moral values or the realm of supernatural. According to him scientists have no expert opinions regarding this. In conclusion, the article by Matt ha covered much on evolution and different views on evolution basing on Darwin’s theory. His work is important in defending most work done by the scientists. This is because his work has mostly been in favor of the evolutionists. For example he agrees with Darwin that people are closely related to the apes. He disagrees with the Christian claims and challenges antievolutionists by arguing that not every word in the bible is literally true. However, Matt does entirely support the scientists; he concludes that science has nothing to do with moral values (Matt, 83). This means that science is not completely perfect as thought by some scientists. Therefore this article is a lesson to many scientists.
Work cited
Matt Cartmill. Oppressed by Evolution. Discover; Mar 1998; 19, 3; ProQuest Research Library
