Baptist preacher and blogger Internet Monk ranted about the same thing. In a later blog posting (which I can’t find now that I want to cite it), he described YEC attitudes as part of a more generic “Get on our bus or get run over.”

Y’all need to understand (as Steven J. Gould took great pains to clarify), that evolution is not the inevitable progression and improvement of a species. Evolution at its base means only adaptation. Survival of the fittest only applies to an organism that is “fit” to function in a particular environmental niche. In no way does evolution science define one species, or ethnic group, as inherently superior to any other.

With this understanding, one should properly wince when watching the play/movie “Inherit the Wind”. William Jennings Bryant was a very prominent fighter for social justice issues, and denounced the “theory of evolution” partly because of the mentality of “social darwinism” that justified the oppression and exploitation of people in the lesser social strati because of their alleged inferiority. It is a shame that history remembers him as a buffoon because of the Scopes trial, and his stand against “teaching evolution”.

It is also a shame that the vestiges of the movement that opposed the imposition of the mis-interpretation of evolution theory, is now driven by the exploitation of people in the less advantaged social strata, such as rural Louisiana.