… the [Fundamentalist Christian] hard-liners are not relenting. The lone dissenting vote, Dale Bayard, is quoted as saying:
“I am an open-minded person, and I challenge anybody to come and tell me — and I’ve asked a couple of educators that are friends of mine — can you do me a favor and tell me, can you swear on a stack of Bibles there’s no other refutable data that provides an objective other approach to Darwin’s theory?”
This approach is very revealing. It reflects a misunderstanding of science, that there are facts that are “proven” and everything else is “just a theory.” But no one who understands science would say that any theory is proven 100%, or that revisions or alternatives are impossible. But literalists tend to have a certain mode of thought – steeped in authority and certainty, which is anathema to the process of science. Science must be comfortable with complexity and uncertainty, and evidence holds sway (ultimately) over authority. This way of thinking, however, seems alien to those raised to believe in the authority of one reference absolutely, an authority that must be 100% correct in every detail or else it crumbles into worthlessness.
It is an insidious and difficult problem, when a person or group is engaging in a thought pattern of which they are not aware. The statements of creationists reflect this unstated major premise that facts and authority must be absolute.
”