If you needed more evidence that the Darwin lobby wants to turn science education into little more than unquestioned propaganda, take a look at the outlandish new “study” evaluating state science standards published by two officials of the National Center for Science Education, the leading Darwin-only lobbying group. Published by a journal devoted to the one-sided teaching of evolution, the article by Louise Mead and Anton Mates condemns various states for filling their science standards with “dangerous” words and “creationist jargon.”

Just what are these “dangerous” words that must be banned?

“Assess,” “Analyze,” “Evaluate,” and “Critique.”

No, I’m not kidding.

Evolutionists typically claim that the evidence for modern Darwinism is “overwhelming.” But they act as if they know that the evidence is so shaky that the slightest whiff of open discussion will topple the theory, and they are working overtime to prevent students and teachers from being able to evaluate the evidence for themselves.

Increasingly, the Darwinists’ justification for shutting down open inquiry by students and teachers is the patronizing insistence that high school students are too infantile to be allowed to discuss things like adults. In the words of Mead and Mates: “Expecting high school biology students to be able to evaluate evolutionary theory is no more reasonable than expecting high school physics students to evaluate quantum field theory. If students had the necessary knowledge and skills to make such judgments, there would be little reason for college science courses!” Rubbish. If high school students are capable of understanding the arguments and evidence for evolutionary theory, then they should be able to understand — and rationally discuss — scientific criticisms of modern evolutionary theory.

At some point, reasonable people outside the Darwin lobby are going to realize that the real threat to science education in America isn’t coming from proponents of intelligent design or other critics of Neo-Darwinism. It’s coming from the Darwinists themselves, who are trying to replace the scientific method in science classrooms with unthinking dogmatism and learning by rote.