Social, political, academic and media establishments frequently ridicule and malign the deniers of evolution when just about everything those same establishments promote is in direct conflict with the tenets of the theory.

First, according to the prophets of modernity and pop scientists like Bill Nye, evolution is a scientifically settled fact and anyone that denies it is a superstitious, small-minded idiot unworthy of air, a job, or public office.  In full disclosure, I used to routinely deny the science of evolution mostly because every book I read on the topic (Leakey, Asimov, Coyne and others) usually had an ax to grind against theism, faith and Christianity up front. It was not until I read Collins’ Language of God that I could let my guard down long enough to understand why Christians, of all people, should be on the forefront of scientific knowledge as they were in all previous ages. I soon accepted the science of evolution while still refuting the specious philosophy that usually accompanies it.

Indeed, evolution goes far to answer the questions of biology, atavism, morphology, and vestigiality. But nothing in science is ever, ever settled. That’s what makes it science—ideas constantly challenged by the scientific community and evolution should be no exception. Consider the following present and past topics that constituted or challenged so-called “settled science”: geo-centrism, aether, time dilation, static universe, contracting universe, dark matter, multiverse, Higgs boson, the rationality of numbers, the quintic, quantum mechanics, and so forth. Nothing in science is settled and to quell dissent is to quell scientific inquiry.

But supposing that the theory of evolution is a firm and settled fact, who really denies it in the present age?  Is it the fundamentalist clinging to his guns, religion and a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis? Consider these modern lines of thought that course against the scientific grain of evolution:

• Men and women are the same and society should blur the lines delineating the sexes.
  • Evolution provided gender diversity and the unique roles of the male and the female to vary and propagate life. Men are physically stronger, women are nurturing. Men do stupid and dangerous things; women think it through.
• Pregnancy is a pathology.
  • Pregnancy and lactation are the normal and natural state of mature women. To thwart pregnancy by contraception and abortion is to deny nature and, by extension, evolution. Without pregnancy and offspring, evolution is stalled.
• There are no differences between human races.
  • The full title of Charles Darwin’s seminal work is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The topic of varieties and race, including humans, was one of the major points.
• It is wrong for a large and powerful country to overtake a weaker one.
  • In the evolutionary struggle for limited resources, to have one nation, race, tribe take over, subject, or destroy another would be the natural consequence of the fittest surviving.
• Denying someone their rights is immoral.
  • Where do rights and morality come from? According to evolution, the only rights and morality is the expression of the selfish gene. Coercion and the removal of competition is an extrapolation of evolution, so who denies what and why is it wrong?
• Homosexuality is normal
  • Human heterosexuality is the substrate of human evolution. To breed is to contribute to the evolutionary process and to breed a lot is tantamount to the fittest surviving. Homosexuality lacks fecundity, is not productive, and doomed on the science of evolution despite what Jeff Goldblum says in movies.
• Diversity is favored
  • Evolution does not favor diversity; evolution favors the fittest: mint, horseradish, English Ivy (and, quite frankly, the English themselves), kudzu, the American chestnut, the cane toad, and hundreds of other extinct or invasive species have demonstrated that diversity it not the end game. The panda should be extinct, naturally, but we take great strides at great cost to preserve the species, unnaturally. Together we can stop evolution.
• Evolution explains the origins of life.
  • Evolution explains the diversity of life. The self-replicating molecule is the locomotive of evolution and its origins are not quite “settled science”.

The list of policies and ideologies that thwart nature and natural law seems to grow on a daily basis. So who really denies evolution? In some measure, don’t we all?