On ‘Darwinism’

I am not a ‘Darwinist’, and you aren’t, either. Period. First of all, the fact of Evolution by Natural Selection ought not to get too tied up to the person of Charles Darwin. Calling yourself a Darwinist implies a reverence of the person, rather than acknowledgement of the hard evidence in support of his theory. As much as Darwin is rightfully admired for one of the most important discoveries in the history of science, his person as such is completely irrelevant for the validity of the theory.

More important though is the use of the suffix -ism: It is nothing but creationist propaganda. -isms are worldviews, matters of opinion. Evolution by Natural Selection is not. Creationists started to call scientists who dared to point out the silliness of their beliefs ‘Darwinists’, in order to imply that they were a bunch of people sharing a common belief (as opposed to a bunch of people acknowledging the facts), people who have an agenda, people who probably have a evil conspiracy running to rid the schools of god. Because they hate god, those Darwinist do. Or so organizations like the Discovery Institute keep telling me.
It goes without saying that the same holds true for ‘Evolutionism’. You wouldn’t call yourself a ‘Newtonist’ or a ‘Gravitist’ just because you acknowledge the general explanation for why things are falling down. Even if Intelligent Falling were a serious movement rather than a (brilliant) parody, calling yourself a ‘Newtonist’ to show your opposition to it is destructive to your cause. Falsely calling scientific facts -isms is useless at best, but passing fact for opinion and acknowledging a controversy where there really is none at worst. Please don’t do that.

The ID-crowd should be viewed as the bunch of loonies they are, and safely be ignored. If you must address the ‘controversy’ at all, please don’t use terms that they made up. Taking them seriously can only leave the impression that their views actually have substance, which is simply not the case.