This response gets high marks for low cunning. - Philip Kitcher

The Creationists are by no means the first to play on fears about what scientific inquiry will disclose. Anxieties about ourselves endure. If our proper study is indeed the study of humankind, then it has seemed—and still seems—to many that the study is dangerous. Perhaps we shall find out that we were not what we took ourselves to be. But if the historical development of science has indeed sometimes pricked our vanity, it has not plunged us into an abyss of immorality. Arguably, it has liberated us from misconceptions, and thereby aided us in our moral progress.

I now turn to the last gasp of the Creationists’ “scientific” defense of their theory. We have looked at a “theory” that has no detailed problem solutions to its credit (except those it borrows from its rival), that has no clearly defined problem-solving strategies, that encounters anomalies whenever it becomes at all definite, but that typically relapses into vagueness whenever clear-cut refutations threaten. Why should we take this “theory” to be worthy of any consideration?

Creationists are actually criticizing methods that are used throughout science. As I shall argue extensively, there is no basis for separating the procedures and practices of evolutionary biology from those that are fundamental to all sciences. If we let the creationists have their way, we may as well go whole hog. Let us reintroduce the flat-earth theory, the chemistry of the four elements, and mediaeval astrology. For these outworn doctrines have just as much claim to rival current scientific views as Creationism does to challenge evolutionary biology.