Sandwalk: NCSE and the Nature of Science

Thursday, January 29, 2026

NCSE and the Nature of Science

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE, United States) is an organisaton devoted to defending evolution and climate change. It has a long and admirable history of defending evolution from creationist attacks and of keeping creationism out of American public schools. Part of that defense involves keeping religious teachers and scientists as allies by suppporting the view that there is no necessary conflict between religion and science. NCSE has been a strong supporter of methodological naturalism—the view that science is restricted to investigating the natural world. I'll refer to this view as accommodationism.

Clearly, scientific education ought to mean the implanting of a rational, sceptical, experimental habit of mind. It ought to mean acquiring a method – a method that can be used on any problem that one meets – and not simply piling up a lot of facts.

George Orwell

This position (accommodationism) is part of what we now refer to as the Nature of Science (NOS). [Teaching the nature of science vs the scientific method] There is no universal consensus on what NOS means; for example, many of us are opposed to methodological naturalism as a restriction on science. We see science as a way of knowing that can be used to investigate any question, including claims of supernatural causes. That means that science and religion are often in conflict.

NCSE continues to defend a particular view of the Nature of Science that allows for many different ways of knowing and restricts science to the study of the natural world. A recent post by Wendy Johnson, an NCSE Education Specialist, was recently (Jan. 27, 2026) posted on the NCSE website [Understanding different perspectives about evolution]. Much of the discussion is about four different perspectives on evolution illustrated by overlapping venn diagrams that represent Ideology, Biology, and the Nature of Science.

I imagine that this perspective is supposed to represent the view of Christian Young Earth Creationists. I'm not sure if it encompasses the views of all Intelligent Design Creationists because many of them accept things like common descent and argue that evolution is guided by god.

I think this is intended to represent the view of mainstream Christians and Christian scientists. It assumes methodological naturalism and acceptance of religion. I imagine that Ken Miller and Francis Collins would put themselves in this group. We could quibble about whether the people in this group fully accept the scientific view of evolution.

Many of my atheist friends support methodological naturalism and some of them are strong supporters of NCSE. They don't fit into this group or any other group.

This is a strange group. I don't think I know anyone who would identify with all three statements. I certainly don't agree with the statement that "science is the only valid way to develop knowledge" but I can see how my view might be misconstrued this way. My view is that science seems to be the only way of knowing that works so I can tentatively assume that it's the only way until somebody convinces me that there is another valid way of knowing. I don't rule out the possibility of other ways of knowing [Is science the only way of knowing?].

I do not believe that human morality can be explained by science alone. I think it's the product of culture and culture is, at the very least, contingent and often irrational. Decisions about acceptable ethical behavior in a society can be informed by science.

I do not believe that the "scientific method" can be used to show that god(s) don't exist. You can never prove that something doesn't exist. I'm an atheist so I don't believe in god(s) but that doesn't mean I can prove the non-existence of god(s) or the tooth fairy. This is not the group for atheists who accept and understand evolution.

I assume that the author knows people who are in this group. I don't.

To which group do you belong?

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Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Thursday, January 29, 2026

NCSE and the Nature of Science

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