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''A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism'' (or ''Dissent from Darwinism'') is a statement issued in 2001 by the Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian think tank based in Seattle, Washington, U.S., best known for its advocacy of intelligent design. The statement expresses skepticism about the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life, and encourages careful examination of the evidence for "Darwinism", a term intelligent design proponents use to refer to evolution. The statement was published in advertisements under an introduction which stated that its signatories dispute the assertion that Darwin's theory of evolution fully explains the complexity of living things, and dispute that "all known scientific evidence supports () evolution".〔 Further names of signatories have been added at intervals,〔〔 and as of the August 2008 update, it contains 761 names. The list continues to be used in Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns in an attempt to discredit evolution and bolster claims that intelligent design is scientifically valid by claiming that evolution lacks broad scientific support. The claims made in the document have been rejected by the scientific community.〔(Statements from Scientific Organizations ) National Center for Science Education.〕 Robert T. Pennock says that intelligent design proponents are "manufacturing dissent" in order to explain the absence of scientific debate of their claims: "The "scientific" claims of such neo-creationists as Johnson, Denton, and Behe rely, in part, on the notion that these issues (evolution ) are the subject of suppressed debate among biologists. " ... "according to neo-creationists, the apparent absence of this discussion and the nearly universal rejection of neo-creationist claims must be due to the conspiracy among professional biologists instead of a lack of scientific merit." The statement in the document is described as artfully phrased to represent a diverse range of opinions, set in a context which gives it a misleading spin to confuse the public.〔 The listed affiliations and areas of expertise of the signatories have also been criticized.〔〔 In their 2010 book ''Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins'', science and religion scholar Denis Alexander and historian of science Ronald L. Numbers tied the fate of the Dissent to that of the wider intelligent design movement: ==Statement== ''A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism'' states that: The statement, and its title, refer to evolution as "Darwinism" or "Darwinian theory", can lead to confusion, due to the terms having various meanings, but commonly meaning evolution due to the mechanism of natural selection rather than the broader definition of evolution, the change in a species' inherited traits from generation to generation.〔 The terms have meant different things to different people at different times. In terms of the history of evolutionary thought, both "Darwinism" and "neo-Darwinism" are predecessors of the current evolutionary theory, the modern evolutionary synthesis. However, in the context of the creation-evolution controversy, the term "Darwinism" is commonly used by creationists to describe scientists and science teachers who oppose them, and to claim that scientific disagreements about the specific mechanism can sometimes be equated to rejection of evolution as a whole. Intelligent design proponents use the term in all these ways, including the idea that it is a materialist ideology, and the claim that as it proposes natural processes as an explanation for evolution, Darwinism can be equated with atheism and presented as being incompatible with Christianity. Charles Darwin himself described natural selection as being "the main but not exclusive means of modification" of species. The modern theory of evolution includes natural selection and genetic drift as mechanisms, and does not conclude that "the ability of random mutation and natural selection" accounts "for the complexity of life." Southeastern Louisiana University philosophy professor Barbara Forrest and deputy director of the National Center for Science Education Glenn Branch comment on the ambiguity of the statement and its use in the original advertisement: Skip Evans, also of the National Center for Science Education, noted that when interviewed, several of the scientists who had signed the statement said they accepted common descent. He thus suggests that this confusion has in fact been carefully engineered. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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