David P. Barash in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Noting the role of the Royal Air Force in saving his country during the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill observed that never had so many owed so much to so few. We owe a great deal — indeed, literally everything — to evolution, and yet never have so many said and written so much about something they understood so poorly. Not that evolution is all that difficult to understand. Rather, so many people have such strong feelings about it, often connected to so many regrettable stock phrases, that clear thought has often been obscured. This is especially unfortunate in today’s intellectual — or, more to the point, anti-intellectual — climate, with the Bush administration persistently seeking to trump science with ideology.
Notwithstanding recent victories of science over so-called intelligent design in Pennsylvania and Utah, this particular struggle is not likely to end soon. The following catalog of misconceptions, along with responses, is therefore offered for scholars who may well find themselves confronting voices whose amplitude and frequency exceed their wisdom…
More here.
