"'[C]reationists versus evolutionists' [is] a familiar and predictable storyline" that ignores the fascinating details of this scientific debate
Summary of problems with claim:
The proper description would be "creationism versus science" because creationism--whether it be old-fashioned Young Earth creationism or its Intelligent Design descendant--is simply not science. There is no scientific debate about the correctness of evolution, and there can be no scientific debate about ID until the ID creationists produce some science.Full discussion:
So we end up with the "the creationists" versus the "evolutionists," a familiar and predictable storyline that, sadly, rolls over most of the fascinating (and relevant!) details about what individual scientists may actually think. Would you have guessed that an evolutionary biologist would disagree with Universal Common Descent?Explore Evolution, p. 142
It is not simply creationists versus evolutionists that is at issue. More accurately, it is creationists, including young earth-creationists, old earth creationists and intelligent design creationists versus modern science. All of these forms of creationism deny a fundamental ground rule of modern science that science searches for natural explanations for natural phenomena.
The blatant mischaracterization of Malcolm Gordon's views on common ancestry neatly highlights an often used strategy of creationists: In the absence of scientific support, argue by misrepresenting fragments of text.